“So she sat down to morning tea, like any other old lady with a high nose, thin cheeks, a ring on her finger and the usual trappings of rather shabby but gallant old age...”

“Even though they were staring at each other across a busy street, the little old lady and the gang of adolescent skinheads might just as well have been nose to nose. They stared. No one blinked. No one backed down. This little old lady had never in her life backed down before mere adolescents.Her daughter had what was perhaps a better grasp of what was perhaps reality. “Mama,” she said as she shifted her bag of groceries to her other arm, “Come on. Let’s go. They’re skinheads. Probably up from Bircher country.”

“In old age her voice had become thin as a bird's, but her reading was still beautiful to him.”

“At a small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction- it fascinated rather than repelled. She sat very upright. Round her neck was a collar of very large pearls which, improbable though it seemed, were real. Her hands were covered with rings. Her sable coat was pushed back on her shoulders. A very small and expensive black toque was hideously unbecoming to the yellow, toad-like face beneath it.”

“She was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl. And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men's voices grow high and reedy and the take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and the grow dark little mustaches.”

“When I wake up in the morning, I feel like any other insecure 24-year-old girl. Then I say,'Bitch, you're Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today.”