Sarah Schmidt Quotes

I folded Lizzie into small pieces. But the letters did not stop.

There was a time in my life when I believed I could have a place in the world, that I deserved bigger things than the average young woman because I could imagine an existence outside of Fall River, outside family life. Then I turned twenty-five and everything I knew about myself all but ended. It was the year Father tried to marry me off.

How many years does it take to grow into someone?

The life I'd had was disappearing. Every adult who had ever held me as a baby was dead and no one would ever carry me again.

I ate and drank what I wanted in Paris. Butter, duck fat, liver fat, triple-cream brie, deep cherry-red wines, pear, clementine and lavender jelly, crème cakes, caviar, escargot in sautéed pine nuts and garlic butter. I did what the French did, I licked my fingers, didn't care if people saw, what they thought. Father would've hated it, would've told me I was uncouth. I ate everything up, ate his money, was delightful everywhere I went. I learned how to wrap my tongue around accented vowels, spoke to this stranger and that. Nobody knew me, didn't expect anything from me. I wanted to stay like that forever.