“Then she added in a sort of childish delight: 'We'll be poor, won't we? Like people in books. And I'll be an orphan and utterly free. Free and poor! What fun!' She stopped and raised her lips to him in a delighted kiss.'It's impossible to be both together,' said John grimly. 'People have found that out. And I should choose to be free as preferable of the two...”

“Submit to me."So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore, wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen alseep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought.”

“No woman is really humble; she is merely politic. No woman, with a free choice before her, chooses self-immolation; the most she genuinely desires in that direction is a spectacular martyrdom. No woman delights in poverty. No woman yields when she can prevail. No woman is honestly meek.”

“So one time I said to her that she should stop reading it, because it was just depressing, so she was like, But I want to know what’s going on, so I was like, Then you should do something about it. It’s a free country. You should do something. She was like, Nothing’s ever going to happen in a two-party system. She was like, da da da, nothing’s ever going to change, both parties are in the pocket of big business, da da da, all that? So I was like, You got to believe in the people, it’s a democracy, we can change things. She was like, It’s not a democracy.”

“Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?”

“What are the thorns really telling her? It's why she won't let us see them, why she clings to them--or they cling to her--as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she can't get out and we can't get in to free her.”