“American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past.”

“The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.”

“In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.”

“Images of African Americans as bad mothers, ineffective mothers, and matriarchs...conceal and justify the difficult conditions in which they work and raise children. But oddly enough, these same women, who are said to run amok in their own communities, are thought to be entirely competent at parenting the children of the elite-as mammies during slavery, as domestic workers during segregation, or as child care workers today.”

“Those who lament the dissolution of the American family-kids with no way to get to Girl Scouts, aging parents put into nursing homes-should remember what it was that kept the American family together: women's blood.”

“American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.”