“I'm not consciously hiding anything.' After Ruth said that she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritation, the fears? How tiresome that would be.”

“Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes.”

“But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.”

“The men on the hills told her that she hated them, and they did everything they could to make it true. She did not fight very hard. It was an easy thing to do. She wonders whether it would have been possible to behave any differently. She hopes it is. She hopes that, somewhere in the city, there are people who are resisting the temptation to turn these men into devils, to say that all men are like them, to oppose their very existence the way they always said the people of Sarajevo did.”

“I'm not the girl men chose.I'm the girl who's charming and funny and then drives home wondering what she did wrong. I'm the girl who meets someone halfway decent and then fills in the gaps in his character with my own imagination, only to be shocked when he's not the man I thought he was.I'm the girl who hides who she really is for fear I'll fall short. ”

“Grandmother," Ruth admonished. "I would not have a man who could not at least understand me.""And it looks like you might have finally fond one, heaven be praised." Ruth began to grow irritated. "Grandmother, I wish you would have more faith in me.""I do, dear; it's the men I worry about.”