“It could have been called the scam of the century, their pretense of a happy marriage,yet as several weeks passed and it continued with such perfection, Rebecca had to pinch herself to keep from believing it herself.”

“Peter was the current someone she used to keep from relying on herself, the crutch to hold on to, to promise herself that if she only had him to love, she would have it all come together. Why did she keep throwing men up as smoke screens between herself and herself?”

“...joy was something she willed herself to show us, something she raised from deep inside herself as a promise for what could be. Now her life seemed to have opened up into it as if it had been waiting for her. (215)”

“But truly it was not the money that mattered. It was the distant glitter of everything that was possible in the world, the things she had always wanted for herself and could not name and called happiness because there was no other word.”

“He was right – she was beating herself up about hurting his feelings. The girl was a classic martyr. She’d totally been born in the wrong century. She should have lived back when she could have gotten herself fed to some lions for a good cause.”

“She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her.”