Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow. - Margaret Atwood

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next — if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions — you'd be doomed. You'd be as ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.

What is believed in society is not always the equivalent of what is true; but as regards to a woman's reputation, it amounts to the same thing.