In every human being there is a blessed soul made miserable by the pursuit of happiness. (p69) - Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Unexpected confidence fills me. Slowly I feel it emerge. Is this maturity? I run my hand over my face to feel the first transformations in my features. Yes, I have changed. My moist lips are parted on a tentative decision still unclear to me. I realize my worth. Everything that has fermented in my mind over forty years-my unappeased desires, my unheard pleas, the oblivion of solitary pleasure-is rising up within me. A revolution. I feel ready to answer to the demands of my being. (p67-8)

The repressed have this in common: they exaggerate the importance of what they deny themselves. The priests conceal their desire under a skirt, the nuns under a veil, and yet they are both obsessed by it. (p27)

Alone again, she had invented touchingly naïve myths to console herself: a leaf whirling in the wind, a butterfly whether black or alive with color, the hooting of an owl or the graceful song of a nightingale, everything seemed pregnant with meaning. (chapter 8)