“You see the same plain landscape day after day, and then one day, perhaps it's the play of light or the time of year, you find it beautiful and other landscapes at fault. So it must be with fashion. Ordinary judgement falls into abeyance and something else, some bewitchment, takes over. How else to explain the appeal of garments that in a few years look so ridiculous?”

“We look so very different from the way we sound. It’s a shock, similar to hearing your own voice for the first time, when you’re forced to wonder how the rest of you comes across if you sound nothing like the way you think you sound. You feel dislodged from the old shoe of yourself.”

“How attraction works, making one's body almost painfully alive and one's thoughts concentrated, also painfully. And the truth of these powerful attractions - they have their own morality and nothing else matters.”

“The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.”

“And when is it ever convincing, the belief others have in your abilities? You know perfectly well they can't see the mess inside you.”

“And then he only had eyes for the pie. Watch any man, he could be ninety years old and drooling spit, but at the sight of homemade pie every last one of his wits will spring to attention.”

“When F. W. Woolworth opened his first store, a merchant on thesame street tried to fight the new competition. He hung out a bigsign: "Doing business in this same spot for over fifty years." Thenext day Woolworth also put out a sign. It read: "Established aweek ago: no old stock.”