City of Girls

I was not built only to labor, and then to sleep, and then to labor again the next day—with no pleasure or excitement. There had to be more to life than toil and travail.

We didn’t speak of it, because we didn’t need to speak of it. We both knew it.

But as she chose her words, I could sense that she was choosing them carefully, so as to not do unnecessary harm.

I said, “That car ride was the worst thing that ever happened to me, Peg.”

“Oh, was it?” snapped Peg. “Did you think to ask the man about the worst thing that ever happened to him?”

The war had invested me with an understanding that life is both dangerous and fleeting, and thus there is no point in denying yourself pleasure or adventure while you are here.

I think it had something to do with my brother being killed, and the painful belief that Walter had died without ever having enjoyed his life.

When I looked around at all the women I knew who’d been married for more than five or ten years, I didn’t see anybody whose lives I envied.

This was important because I was an attractive woman, and for the purposes of my profession it was best not to be too attractive.

I was accustomed to women who would shed their clothes and dance around in front of a mirror with joy—not to women who would flinch at their own reflections.

—a dress that resembled a puffy summer cloud.