“...so when you didn't mention marriage again I assumed that you had been talking idly, the way men do when they're feeling romantic.”

“You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.”

“Yvette had never talked about her marriage - she was a smart girl, and she knew you had no right to complain about someone you got all the way to the altar with. You made that choice, even if you were a child when you did it, and the marriage vow was sacred.”

“Based on her experience with men, most assumed that when you talked to them about a problem or dilemma, they were expected to offer an opinion, even when all you wants was for them to listen.”

“You know you love someone when he makes all the ordinary moments feel extraordinary. When doing absolutely nothing feels like everything. Gray assumed he wasn't enough. And what I didn't admit, what I didn't realize at the time, is that it's just the opposite. He was too much, That kind of love is the kind that traps you. And I'm not ready for it yet.”

“The thing that give me the mos' trouble was, it didn't make no sense. You don't look for no sense when lightnin' kill a cow, or it comes up a lood. That's jus' the way things is. But when a bunch of men take an' lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning. Men is supposed to think things out. Here they put me in an' keep me an' feed me four years. That ought to either make me so I won't do her again or else punish me so I'll be afraid to do her again”