“Can you imagine a princess who works as a counter girl in a fast-food restaurant? I'm sure there's one somewhere. Imagine if all the people who came in to place orders were to realize that their meal was served by a princess! I don't think most people could handle it.''I think it would be hard for a real princess to have to do menial work like that,' Blanche reflected. 'She might think it was beneath her.''Oh, but a real princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,' Rose objected. 'That would be one of the signs.”

“Oh, but a real princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,' Rose objected. 'That would be one of the signs.”

“I think that if a real princess was lost in this modern world and she could be whatever she wanted, she would be a musician,' Blanche said slowly. 'A violinist, or a harpist. That would be the only place where she could find solace for her lost kingdom.”

“She remembered that once, when she was a little girl, she had seen a pretty young woman with golden hair down to her knees in a long flowered dress, and had said to her, without thinking, "Are you a princess?" The girl had laughed very kindly at her and asked her what her name was. Blanche remembered going away from her, led by her mother's hand, thinking to herself that the girl really was a princess, but in disguise. And she had resolved that someday, she would dress as though she were a princess in disguise.”

“Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”

“I throw my head back and laugh long and hard. Then I lean in and whisper in her ear, "You don't know who you're fucking with, princess. Ain't no one do bad like I do.”