“This is the first time for the girl, atime of revelation.Mysteries unravel at this height,patterns emerge.She stands woman--tall, shoulder to shoulder,with the sun and laughs to think thatsuch a splendid world had ever frightened her.All that she sees, farm and forest, pasture andprairie, city and country, and continent,stretches before her like tomorrows filled with promise . . .She was born to this kingdom.In time it will be hers to explore, tomake her own.One climb is over, another just beginning.She is rich in days, wealthy in possibilities.And here in this crowning moment,For the very first time . . .She knows.”

“Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman.”

“She absorbed the terror and beauty of him and his world. Of every moment over the past days. All of it, filling her up like the first breath she'd ever taken. And never had she loved life more.”

“A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back. In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time. Each person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment she was born, the moment she took her first step, the moment of her first passion, the moment she said goodbye to her parents.”

“A girl never forgets two things: the day she started her period for the first time, and the day she met the love of her life.”

“It had not been a long journey, but the memory of it filled her like an infection. She had felt tethered by time to the city behind her, so that the minutes stretched out taut as she moved away, and slowed the farther she got, dragging out her little voyage.”