“Rather than being liberated by er sexuality, a woman's reliance on sexual attractiveness was just one more way in which she allowed herself to be stereotyped and thus used by men”

“Girl, you are wiser than your years.”“Actually, Randall, I’m just older than I look.”

“At one point, a girl who looked to be in her early twenties, with a Joan of Arc haircut, passed right in front of the glass. When Mitchell looked at her, the girl did an amazing thing: she looked back. She met his gaze with frank sexual meaning. Not that she "wanted" to have sex with him, necessarily. Only that she was happy to acknowledge, on this late-summer evening, that he was a man and she a woman, and if he found her attractive, that was all right with her. No American girl had ever looked at Mitchell like that.Deanie was right: Europe was a nice spot.”

“What's the use of being sexually liberated, if no one else wants you?”

“That's a lot of rope.”

“Though at this moment she felt abused, abandoned, and ashamed of herself, Madeleine knew that she was still young, that she had her whole life ahead of her--a life in which, if she persevered, she might do something special--and that part of persevering meant getting past moments just like this one, when people made you feel small, unlovable, and took away your confidence.”

“She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.”