“Recently abandoned women can be complicated.”

“The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.”

“Not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it.”

“It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)”

“And why should I do such a thing- tell you something that can only dismay you? Well, that is the nature of love: it is brutal in its demands.”

“Even someone you've inhabited rooms with, and seen naked everyday, seen sitting on the toilet through a half-opened door, can fade out after a while and become an outline.”

“I believe in walking out of a museum before the paintings you've seen begin to run together. How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?”