“The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl's highest calling. I hope I am ready.”

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“I am a girl ready to explode into nothing.”

“The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something.What can she become? I asked.Why, she said, the mother of his children.But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.”

“A girl who bonnets a policeman with an ashcan full of bottles is obviously good wife-and-mother timber.”

“I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”