“It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.”

“I think," Ella said, "that what a woman does or doesn't do should be up to the woman, and she should make up her own mind and not change it when the wind starts to blow. I think a woman should be who she is, not what others expect her to be. And if she wants to go to a dance looking for a man, she should go and not feel like she has to explain herself. And if she want to have her own farm, she should do that and not feel like she has to explain that, either. And…I think you should be quiet now.”

“Cooper took his hat off and swiped his forehead. Finally he spoke. "Well, Frank, to my mind, what a woman does or doesn't do should be up to the woman. She should be who she is, not what others expect her to be." It's her land. As far as I'm concerned she's the boss.”

“She was a woman who made mistakes, who sometimes cried on a Monday morning or at night alone in bed. She was a woman who often became bored with her life and found it hard to get up for work in the morning. She was a woman who more often than not had a bad hair day, who looked in the mirror and wondered why she couldn't just drag herself to the gym more often; she was a woman who sometimes questioned what reason had she to live on this planet. She was a woman who sometimes just got things wrong.On the other hand, she was a woman with a million happy memories, who knew what it was like to experience true love and who was ready to experience more life, more love and make new memories.”

“The blood kept welling up and getting over things so that she couldn’t see what she was doing, which annoyed her; but she knew that theoretical clarity was unattainable in times of action.”

“I'm looking for a writer who doesn't know where the sentence is leading her; a writer who starts with her obsessions and whose heart is bursting with love, a writer sly enough to give the slip to her secret police, the ones who know her so well, the ones with the power to accuse and condemn in the blink of an eye. It's all right that she doesn't know what she's thinking until she writes it, as if the words already exist somewhere and draw her to them. She may not know how she got there, but she knows when she's arrived.”