“That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams.The girls of 1929.”

“It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.”

“Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets...”

“Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.”

“It was like the color of his eyes, she supposed - not quite one shade or another, and utterly unlike anyone else's.”

“All really interesting girls invent themselves.”

“Travel always excited her--the strong and unfamiliar smells, the movement, the anxiety of arrival and departure times, she shouting of conductors, the idea of her tired old self changed by ever new...”

“One did not win by throwing temper tantrums.”

“Slowly the sky turned from the color of cornflower to that of hyacinth, and the Ferris wheel at Coney Island appeared like a ring of diamonds against the twilight. New York-that city made of canyon...”

“But youre out of another world old kid You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”

“[Poem: Slates of Grey]Sullen faces like slates of greyWhat Id seen on a walk today.Bodies rushing bodies boltingTime for life a disregarding.Money to make and to grow oldWhat about the hands to hol...”

“I would describe the distinction between city and landscape like this: cities tend to excite and agitate me; they make me feel big or small, self-confident, proud, curious, excited, tense, annoyed....”