“You look fine.
- Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.”

“Uptown girl
She's been living in her uptown world.
I bet she never had a backstreet guy
I bet her mama never told her why.
I'm gonna try for an uptown girl.
She's been living in her white bread world
As long as anyone with hot blood can
And now she's looking for a downtown man
That's what I am.”

“The fundamental mistake I had always made—and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make—was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”

“I know," he said, looking down at himself self-consciously. "I am not-I mean, I look-"
"Beautiful," she said, and she meant it. "You look beautiful, James Carstairs.”

“In her businesslike way she thought that her life had begun when she was a very young woman and she really did look lovely: you knew it wouldn't last and you packed all you could into it — but men were different. A man like B — like Alfie, too — never got beyond the time when they were boys and, damn them, it kept them young.”

“Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friend calls it.”

“When the girl sitting at the next table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened.”

“That's when I asked her where was that actress
She said "That was somebody else"
And then I asked her why she looked so happy now
She said "I finally like myself, at last I like myself."”

“This is the stupidest place I have ever visited,' she said. 'I shall never come here again.' The tall man looked at her in silence and nodded. 'Yes, you will,' he said. 'You won't be able to stay away now that you have come.”

“A CARE
Your shadow –
Looks nothing like you
She said passing me by
I pass her by with no regrets
My shadow is my care –
I said

I’m of Darkness –
And Darkness is of me
If you know the place –
where it comes from?
She looked over her shoulder
Only a man She said
Only man – all over the place
wanders along his own steps”