“I do know my own mind,’ protested Anne. ‘The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.”
“Statistics show that men are interested in three things: careers, sports, and sex. That’s why they love professional cheerleaders.”
Cal put down his fork “Well, that’s sexist.”
“Yes I know,” she said. “But it’s true isn’t it?”
“What?” Cal tried to find his place in the conversation. “Oh, the sports and sex thing? Not at all. This is the twenty-first century. We’ve learned how to be sensitive.”
“You have?”
“Sure,” Cal said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t get laid.”
“On the boat the first thing we did — before deciding who we liked and didn’t like, before telling each other which one of the islands we were from, and why we were leaving, before even bothing to learn each other’s names — was compare photographs of our husbands.”
“Every day we’re told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it’s always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it’s startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are “We’re number two!”
“A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.”
“He did a laugh and put his arm round me, though we kept sitting side by side. Then he said: ‘I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. THat’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.'”
“Annemarie stood on the balcony of the apartment with her parents and sister, and watched. Up and down the street, and across on the other side, she could see flags and banners in almost every window. She knew that many of those apartments were empty. For nearly two years, now, neighbors had tended the plants and dusted the furniture and polished the candlesticks for the Jews who had fled. Her mother had done so for the Rosens.
“It is what friends do, ” Mama had said.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
“I am sure there is magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us –like electricity, horses, and steam.”
“And so they entered a new and alien world where they would become a racial minority, seen as different and inferior, and where they would become ‘strangers.'”
Kaori Square Feet 