“perhaps love was like the mumps. If a woman came down with it after forty, it could kill her”

“The average woman would not be pondering how fast her date could kill her, but I’ll never be an average woman.”

“perhaps it took a stranger to make a woman like her speak her mind.”

“And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.”

“Yes, of course. I was on her like, um... I believe that old woman last week we took after she'd burnt down her house cooking said 'like white on rice',”

“I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn't think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.”