"Okay, okay." He stood up and went over to the corner, picking up the painting and bringing it over to rest against the bright pink belly of one of the mannequins. Then, he handed me a bandana. "Tie that on.”"

"I am not," I said. "I've been waiting forever.""

"Man," he said. "You are, like, so impatient.""

"Are you ever going to show me the painting?""

"I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you'd think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous..."

"I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away."

"When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting."

"Where is the heart that doth not keep, Within its inmost core, Some fond remembrance hidden deep, Of days that are no more?"

"Who hath not saved some trifling thing More prized than jewels rare, A faded flower, a broken ring, A tress of golden hair."

"'T is but a little faded flower, But oh, how fondly dear! 'T will bring me back one golden hour, Through many a weary year."

"I was navigating, but not seeing."

"A well-dressed woman, even if her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world."

"I was simply playing myself, which is the hardest thing in the world to do – if you know that it’s hard. I didn’t, so it seemed easy."

"Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter."

"The rest of the girls wore smiles as fixed as their towering feather headdresses. I decided right then that onstage I would never smile unless I felt like it."

"We were Midwesterners born in the Bible Belt of Anglo-Saxon farmers, who prayed in the parlor and practised incest in the barn."

"I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away."

"I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita. How I have existed fills me with horror for I failed in everything. Spelling, arithmetic, writing, swimming, tennis, golf, dancing, singing, acting, wife, mistress, whore, friend, even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of not trying. I tried with all my heart."

"I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife."

"even women with children, can exist in an uneasy wariness such as Kate Chopin depicts in The Awakening"

"(Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?) Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, which I first read in college. The story of Edna Pontellier’s struggle with the limits her culture placed on women made a deep and lasting impression on me."

"She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world."

"She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air."

"The years that are gone seem like dreams -if one might go on sleeping and dreaming- but to wake up and find -oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all ones life."

"And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost."

"You have been a very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both"

"There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning."

"All sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference."

"I've been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Chênière Caminada; the old sunny fort at Grand Terre. I've been working with a little more comprehension than a machine, and still feeling like a lost soul."

"There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone."

"She had resolved never again to belong to another than herself."

"The bird that would soar above the plane of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth."

"Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?' or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'"

"She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth."

"She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle — a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium."

"The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded."

"Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the Mexicans."

"She could only realize that she herself — her present self — was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes."

"As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself."

"Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking, and unguided."

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation."

"An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her with a vague anguish...like a shadow... a mist passing across her soul's summer day."

"Looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage."

"Little scraps of paper, Little crumbs of food, Make a room untidy Everywhere they're strewed."

"How oft the word which we would gladly speak Might be, unto some darkly groping soul, The key to bid doubt's massive doors unroll, The free winds' breath upon the prisoner's cheek, Or. to the hungry heart, sweet pity's dole! We hurry on, nor know that they are near, As passed Evangeline the one so dear."

"How near another's heart we oft may stand, Yet all unknowing what we fain would know Its heights of joy, its depths of bitter woe, As, wrecked upon some desert island's strand, They watch our white sails near and nearer grow; Then we, who for their rescue death would dare, Unheeding pass, and leave them to despair."

"Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love, Make our pleasant earth below Like the heaven above."

"Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land.Thus the little minutes, Humble though they be, Make the mighty ages Of eternity."