“Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.”

“She was too dependent on what other people thought of her, and that was her downfall. She cared too much. She was only what other people saw in her—-that is, what she imagined they saw in her.”

“I never asked her how she was, because I didn't really think about how she was. I just thought about what she thought of me.”

“She painted because she loved to paint. She never exhibited. She had no career, no ambitions for her work except that it be good, and she didn't care what we thought of it.”

“People called her wild, but she wasn't. Not really. She just didn't give a shit what they thought. Maybe that was what they found so unforgivable in the end.”

“She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.”