Anna Godbersen

“Her heart the damned thing had begun to race and she only hoped that the rapid inflation and deflation of her chest wasn't visible beneath her fitted bodice.”

“It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear.”

“It had been too much for Edith to take and she had gone to her room so that her nieces wouldn't see her cry anymore.”

“They will stop calling brides beautiful after today—you have simply set the standard too high,' he said.”

“She had had no idea what it would do to her seeing him in a suit.”

“Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.”

“She was a vision in a white gown her dark hair forming a hazy halo around her rosy heart-shaped face. Her long lashes fluttered to touch her cheeks and then her eyes opened fully in his direction. Her small round mouth flexed in an immediate and knowing smile. That's the girl I'm going to marry Henry thought.”

“She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.”

“It was disgraceful but also romantic enough to make Lina's heart turn.”

“The value of secrets is ever fluctuating although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told.”

“Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.”

“Teddy risked a look backward and nodded as he handed Henry his hat. The two men shook hands and then walked past each other Teddy moving in the direction of Henry's room and Henry the hat pulled down over his face toward the Cutting carriage that was waiting by the curb.”

“That was the way love was, she guessed-it left you always unsteady on your feet.”

“You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes."Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you.""No.”

“Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites,While bad girls slink along in their shame-Everyone stares at them, everyone blames.But those bad girls sleep soundly at night,Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright,While our good girls toss and they turn-They lay awake for those who will burn.”

“So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.”

“What did it matter anyway that she was so much lovelier than the other girls when Henry was so blind.”

“Recurrent memories of Henry Schoonmaker were the most exciting thing to happen in her conscious mind these days.”

“She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.”

“A lady must retain always her composure. Even in a rainstorm, she must appear joyous and dry. When she loses her composure, then the respect of her peers and her staff will follow in short order.”

“She should have know that villains often come with pretty faces.”

“Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enough to bury her alive.”

“It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself—for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.”

“All really interesting girls invent themselves.”

“Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings.”

“Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.”

“Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.”

“He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.”

“A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.”

“So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow.”

“Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.”

“I've always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we'll have.”

“Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.”

“Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.”

“The living are made of nothing but flaws. The dead, with each passing day in the afterlife, become more and more impeccable to those who remain earthbound.”

“The headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.”

“He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tired to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time.”

“Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.”

“It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.”

“It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.”

“Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.”

“We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects. These may be messages from God or tricks of the eye, but in neither case are we permitted to ignore them.”

“The world is such a marvel-it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.”

“Well, if you weren't flirting with him"-his voice had now grown a little plaintive-"who was he, and what did you want with him anyway?""If you are so determined to bore me, I may just have to go home." Astrid sighed carelessly, "What a shame, when I am wearing such a pretty dress.”

“Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.”

“Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.”

“It is often advantageous to forget. Forget your wincing humiliations, forget life's blows, and get on. For blocks in every direction, down every street in the city, people not yet old enough to have lines on their foreheads were laughing away memory, warmly ensconced in shrines of forgetfulness. Those who followed the word of God and those who preferred what the priests called "hoodoo" alike. People everywhere forgetting with drink or forgetting with religion or forgetting with the numbing quality of their many heaps of things. They looked forward and imagined rosy tomorrows, and gave up whatever horrors heckled their dreams, and listened to the pretty stories of whomever ruled their pulpit.”

“Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.”

“Don't go looking for boys in the darkThey will say pretty things thenleave you with scars.Do go looking for boys in the parkFor that is where the true gentlemen are.”