“When some women felt fear, they covered it with an iron grate of courage, I thought. Men might be dangerous, but they were very often unperceptive. If fear only rumbled through a womans soul and gl...”

“He was an indecent man, I told myself - prayerfully - and then I prayed for him to become decent.”

“It was a tribute to Raphael that lesser artists wanted to copy his work, but this this was a travesty. The fresco consisted of Galateas apotheosis, wherein she is surrounded by mythical creatures. ...”

“In August, an inescapable blanket of heat settled over Paducah, the last gasping breath of summer roaring its weight out over the populace.”

“Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who liv...”

“We are the bourgeoisiethe third estate, as they call us nowand what we want is a nobility of merit, nothing more. We don't recognize this lazy nobility we now have, we reject our present class hier...”

“Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.”

“Being a nun wasn't all it was cracked up to be and the sex was shit.”

“The place suggested a convent with the modern improvementsan asylum in which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a ...”

“The silence of a convent at night is the silence of the grave. Too far removed from the busy world without for external sounds to penetrate the thick walls, whilst within no slamming door, nor wand...”

“Which one of them would make you the most sad if you had to live your life without him?”