“I didn't want to be a virgin. That much I knew. I didn't want to feel like the immature prude who knew nothing about sex. I hated not knowing things. The trouble was...as much as I didn't want to be a virgin, I also didn't want to have sex.”

“I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I always knew the woman I wanted to be.”

“I knew. I was not naive. I didn't want to know. I was naive.”

“I didn't want to take it. I knew it was a powerful drug, but I also knew it was a catabolic drug that consumed the body.”

“I was angry all the time about the future I didn't want with people I didn't like. But I didn't know what I wanted - so what else was there to do?”

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.”