“If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.”

“If girls could do nothing else in this world, they were supposed to be able to keep their blood from showing.”

“There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children.”

“That's what being crazy was, wasn't it? You thought you were fine. Everyone else knew better.”

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

“Thank goodness there were people who were happy with nothing, thought Julia, so that people like her (and everyone else she had ever met), could have more.”

“One may view the individual’s everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality… [for example] ‘Well, it’s time for me to get to the station,’ and ‘Fine, darling, have a good day at the office’ implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make sense… the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this world… the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality… imagine the effect…of an exchange like this: ‘Well, it’s time for me to get to the station,’ ‘Fine, darling, don’t forget to take along your gun.”

“She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.”

“Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.”

“Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.”