She likes to be cavalier about things that would change other people's lives. Isn't that the very definition of power? Watching people kill themselves over something that means nothing to you?

I once read that charisma is "charm that inspires devotion." And I can't help but think of that now, when she's holding my coffee for me. The combination of such a powerful woman and such a small and humble gesture is enchanting, to be sure.

None of it was Ernie's fault. I'd told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he couldn't see who I really was.

I was supposed to be both naive and erotic. It was as if I was too wholesome to understand the unwholesome thoughts you were having about me.

Be wary of men with something to prove.

That is the fastest way to ruin a woman's reputation, after all - to imply that she has not adequately threaded the needle that is being sexually satisfying without ever appearing to desire sexual satisfaction.

"Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box, Monique. Don't do that."

Sometimes reality comes crashing down on you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.

You imagine a world where the two of you can go out to dinner together on a Saturday night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.

You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.

You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.”

But that’s a luxury. You can do that when you’re rich and famous. You can decide that wealth and renown are worthless when you have them.

"You're using reason," Evelyn says, smiling at me. "It doesn't always work."

When you write the ending, Monique, tell everyone that it is the people I miss. Tell everyone that I got it wrong. That I chose the wrong things most of the time.

No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.

You don't have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.