“She was irritated, briefly, by the thought that she might be becoming more mature. Why should she become a better person when no one else did?”

“She had something she needed to talk about, but if she actually put it into words, the facts contained in the "something" might irretrievably become more definite *as* facts, so she wanted to postpone that moment, if only briefly.”

“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.”

“When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse”

“She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.”

“The irresponsible mother helped explain bella's maturity. She'd had to grow up early, to become the caretaker. That's why she didn't like being cared for- she felt it was her job.”