“That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams.The girls of 1929.”

“...when girls use the brightness of their eyes or the softness of their skin, they have an uncommon advantage in getting what they want.”

“It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.”

“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.”

“Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.”

“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.”

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