“I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories.”

“In my forties, my optimism was boundless. I had really good health and tremendous success which allowed me to do anything I wanted.”

“On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.”

“Survival was my only hope, success my only revenge.”

“Do no harm and leave the world a better place than you found it.”

“When what we believe we’ve mastered is no longer predictable we’re not fine. The world suddenly is a very scary place. It loses its charm.”

“I was a small insect faced with a formidable male network web in which I might be ensnared but never a part.”

“A part of me expects more of my only sister....Dorothy has always been exactly who she is, and for me to hope for anything better reminds me of a quote attributed to Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Dorothy is predictable. She does the same thing repeatedly and expects not a different result but the same one she got the last time she did whatever she wants with little regard for anyone else. So maybe she's the sane one....”

“Survival my only hope. Success my only revenge”

“The public is blaming the city officials, who in turn have to find someone else to blame. It's the nature of the beast. If the police, the politicians, can pass the buck on down the line, they will.”

“If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear the fear itself can cause damage that's as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently.”