“…it was rather because she felt less happy than she had expected.  She laughed because she was disappointed…”

“I asked for so little!” she kept saying, as though her diminished demands alone should have protected her against any disappointments. But I think she was mistaken; she had actually asked for a lot. She had dared to ask for happiness, and she had dared to expect that happiness out of her marriage. You can’t possibly ask for more than that.”

“The only time she felt excited or happy was when she had had a drink because then anything might happen. That feeling of insecurity became exciting.”

“She had married him because she felt sage, because she'd had enough pain to last her a lifetime, and because although he had many faults, faults she was aware of before she married him, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.She knew because there was no passion, and the only time she had felt passion, it had come with a price.”

“…Elizabeth, agitated and confused, rather knew that she was happy, than felt herself to be so…”

“She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She cried because she was fifty six years old and her feet were ugly and swollen and horrible; she cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later; she cried because Howard Givings was the only man who'd ever asked her to marry him, and because she'd done it, and because her only child was insane.”