“The world is wide, wide, wide, and I am young, young, young, and we’re all going to live forever!”
“It's just that I know the world is so wide and full of people and exciting things that I just go crazy every day stuck in these institutions. I mean if I don't get started soon, how will I get the chance to sharpen my wits? It takes lots of training. You have to start very young.”
“Oh, Teddy, darling, thank you, thank you, for restoring my cynicism. I was too young to lose it. ”
“Please forgive me, but I've never had to change my mind so often at such short notice in my whole life. It's quite breathtaking. You see, first I thought you wanted my body, then I thought you wanted my love, then my life even, happily-ever-after and all that sort of thing, and now it turns out it is merely my money. Oh, Teddy, darling, thank you, thank you.' ...For what?' ...For restoring my cynicism. I was too young to lose it.”
“What did I feel? Appalled. Astonished. Bewildered. I thought I was doing so well. I thought I was charming the hell out of him. I thought I had him eating out of my hand. Well: I thought I was getting away with it. I might have known. There is always a catch. But suddenly I felt very very young, like a child. Suddenly I wanted to run to - God knows whom, maybe God Himself - why is there never a face I can put to whom I want to run? - and cry, 'But I thought he liked me. All I want is to be liked.' And then, thank heaven, cold rage and fury.”
“If I wanted so much to go-- if everything I wanted in the whole world was on the other side of that door, why didn't I just go?... What kept me frozen there in a despair composed equally of impotent rage and a strange reluctance to shatter some exquisite but invisible structure, neither the shape nor purpose of which was apparent to me? In a words, what the hell was going on?”
“It's difficult to explain, but I just somehow feel that I never really *have* lived; that I never really will live--exist or whatever--in the sense that other people do. It drives me crazy. I was terribly aware of it all those nights waiting for you in the Ritz bar looking around at what seemed to be real grown-up lives. I just find everybody else's life surrounded by plate glass. I mean I'd like to break through it just once and actually touch one.”