Danielle Lazarin Quotes

There's something about me at that age that is trustworthy, that makes men think I will not judge them, though I do, all the time; I just keep it to myself. I am not beautiful, but I am pretty enough. That year, and for years after, I hold on to the pretty parts, to the appearance of being open. If only I had allowed myself to look mean in those photos.

I believed then that a man might be interested in me only for my intelligence.

Claire sensed that her mother wanted all the ugliness of her daughter's growing up over with, as though the pain she was sure to experience was best to happen quickly. Claire wanted these years before adulthood, ugly as they might be, to take their time. She wanted her mother to be wrong.

We called our mothers by their first names only in their absence. We were still good girls then, but even if we'd been brave enough to try, we wouldn't have known what to rebel against.

I don't know a lot of women in Paris. They seem to be from another life of mine, and when I transfer to a college in California the next year, I'll be hungry for them but I'll have forgotten how to be around them. It will take years to understand the different things that women want from me than men do.