“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”

“Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality”

“When a man comes to love a woman exactly as she had dreamed, she decides he is a weakling.”

“She did love him, you know… It was a selfish, possessive love, but it was all she knew how to give.”

“She did the best that we could be; she was perfectly charming and perfectly loving. She was a dream. And she was the kind of dream that you remember when you wake up smiling.”

“Do not grieve for her! Who knows, but she may have found the joy she sought? Love and patience are all that make for happiness in this world; or in the world of the past or of the future; of the living or the dead. She dreamed her dream; and that is all that any of us can ask.”

“Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.”

“So softly death succeeded life in her,
She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.”

“A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew how. To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable.”

“She takes just like a woman, yes she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.”