A clever girl may pass through the phase of foolish miss on the way to sensible woman.

A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.

As for Elizabeth Bennet, our chief reason for accepting her point of view as a reflection of her author's is the impression that she bears of sympathy between them--an impression of which almost every reader would be sensible, even if it had not the explicit confirmation of Jane Austen's letters. Yet, as she is presented to us in Pride and Prejudice, she is but a partial and sometimes perverse observer.

there is no girl we are not always already making into a woman from the moment she is born — making a city in the dirt next to the boot of a man. It could be rage or love in his feet. The girl could be me or any other girl.

Maybe someday we'll have a woman president. Not me, though.

I don't want to be a fulfilled woman.