“Later, Jenny would say she seldom knew what she would take a picture of when she picked up a camera, that she only knew once she peered through the viewfinder, as if the photograph had finally found her.”

“...but she never knew what it was like to walk away from the thing she had most wanted. Years later she would say, "Photography allowed me to make the world and be in the world.”

“…that would be too much like running away, and that, she would not do. She does not run—they cannot make her—she walks.”

“It was hard not to feel resentment that men weren't forced into these choices. Some days she felt that she would spend all her time trying to forget her life before children because she loved them too much to be reminded of the heat of Rome in the summer and a beautiful girl who turned heads as she walked down an Italian strada.”

“S___ likes being around other people; she just isn't particularly comfortable talking to them. She supposes that she is some variety of voyeur, enjoying the spectacle, breathing in the atmosphere, while experiencing uneasiness when asked to become part of it. None of this makes her unhappy. The life of a wallflower, she often thinks, is not such a terrible life.”

“But any picture could deal with the problem of light. The problem with this picture is greater than that of reflective surfaces - it's one of death. You invite a profound theme into your work when you choose cut flowers. You are talking about mortality and time moving forward. You are saying that everything, everything we see and experience and love happens uniquely and happens only once. When you take a picture of a flower in a glass you are, paradoxically, capturing evanescence. You are also showing the indifference of Nature. There is no mourning in a flower photograph, only a shrugging of the shoulders.”

“…she eventually forgave him, because she understood him.”