“I say that almost everywhere there is beauty enough to fill a person's life if one would only be sensitive to it. but Henry says No: that broken beauty is only a torment, that one must have a whole beauty with man living in relation to it to have a rich civilization and art. . . . Is it because I am a woman that I accept what crumbs I may have, accept the hot-dog stands and amusement parks if I must, if the blue is bright beyond them and the sunset flushes the breasts of sea birds?”

“The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn't ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know.”

“I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one.”

“But we are not what the other one needs, still he is certain that I will find great love in my life someday. He is sure of it. After all, he says, beauty attracts beauty.”

“Any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told that I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it just to stand one minute on God's earth a free woman.”

“The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. .. Even in the Eternal City (Rome), says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”

“She’s beautiful—broken and battered, still the most beautiful woman in the world to me—the only woman in the world for me.”