Failure was startling, really. So startling that I hardly noticed it a — Jane Smiley

"She had gone off from her husband to live by herself with the priests, had she not? Does a man, seeing a trinket lying before him in the grass, fail to pick it up?"

"She said, “Some are born bossy, some achieve bossiness, and some have bossiness thrust upon them.”"

"Margret saw that this is how it is that folk are made to desire what they know they should not have, they are made to wait for it, so that when it comes, no matter how dark and full of sin and repellent it is, they are glad enough to welcome it."

"My mind is like a room where the door swings free in the breeze, and many visitors come and go and stay and vanish as they will."

"All I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn’t forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can’t stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That’s my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment."

"It was always and ever hard to tell with women why they chose one way and not another."