“Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked...”

“And there the wicked witch stayed for a long long time.'
Did she ever come out?'
Not yet.”

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

“It became known that I had a rather fertile imagination, when it came to private activities."
She stared. "What sort of private activities?"
This time he did smile, and it turned his face wicked. "Disrobe, and I'll be happy to demonstrate.”

“She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?”

“She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.”

“She is so deluded that she genuinely believes she speaks for all women. She's a victim of her own success. I liked the early Steinem. There was once a survey conducted for Time about who would make a good candidate for the first female president, and I wrote in Gloria Steinem. But now? Gloria Steinem is dissing men and dissing fashion and she's out having her hair streaked at Kenneth's. She became a socialite with a coterie. A lot of middle-aged white ladies still love her, but the media have been negligent regarding her.”

“She had never imagined she had the power to make someone else so happy. And not a magical power, either--a purely human one.”

“You had to know someone very well to make them laugh like that. She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did not know him at all?”

“For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache.”