“... in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.”

“Many women to whom I have preached the doctrine of freedom have weakly replied, 'But who is to support the children?' It seems to me that if the marriage ceremony is needed as a protection to insure the enforced support of children, then you are marrying a man who, you suspect, would under certain conditions, refuse to support his children, and it is a pretty low-down proposition. For you are marrying a man whom you already suspect of being a villain. But I have not so poor an opinion of men that I believe the greater percentage of them to be such low specimens of humanity.”

“Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people's women who pay the most.”

“Oyster Tom said that they were not talking about people but about men. He agreed that most men remain accountable to themselves only, and that but poorly. He said that the proper chore of a man is to be chargeable for those and that dear to him and that this was something women understood and knew how to do without being told. It was a thing women looked for in their men, and this was why most women lived lives of bottomless sorrow.”

“Women see through each other, but they rarely look into themselves”

“Allure goes beyond appearances to the way they grace the world. Some women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. Others glide through life as if on ice skates. Some women convey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of their laughter.”