“The other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.”

“Memories might keep him alive but they might kill me.”

“When a mother loses a daughter, she grieves over the future that her daughter will never have, but she can take solace in memories of close-knit days. But when your daughter runs away, it is the fond memories that have been laid to rest; and your daughter's future, alive and well, recedes from you like a wave drawing out to sea.”

“The business of Mr. Bennett's life was to keep his daughters alive. The business of Mrs. Bennett's was to get them married.”

“They were told what they wanted and they believed it. They can only keep their dream alive by being with others like themselves who will mirror their illusions.”

“The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. ”