“I would have to go into the tunnel whether I wanted to or not - the tunnel was the road of going on, and there was more of the road on the other side of it - but the entrance was where [my teacher] had to stop. Inside the tunnel was what I was meant to learn”

“I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.”

“I remember the rules, rules that were never spelled out but every woman knew: Don't open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don't stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don't turn to look. Don't go into a laundromat, by yourself, at night.I think about laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What I put into them: my own clothes, my own soap, my own money, money I had earned myself. I think about having such control.Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and not man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles.There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from.”

“I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.”

“A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.”

“And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.”

“If I was going to do something I didn't want to do, I at least wanted to be remunerated for it.”