“It wasn't awful to be a man's sex object if you wanted to be, if it made you feel good, if everyone was happy in the end.”

“Would the people in her life still love her if they knew the whole truth about her? Perhaps, but would they love her the same?”

“... at thirty-two she had less dating experience than the average high school student.”

“That she lived a lie. That she wasn't the good girl everyone believed her to be, wanted her to be.”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”