Anna Godbersen

Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.

— Anna Godbersen

...she considered herself unconventional...

— Anna Godbersen

“I am a good leader; I know how to explain men to themselves.”

— Anna Godbersen

Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.

— Anna Godbersen

Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.

— Anna Godbersen

Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.

— Anna Godbersen

“Henry wondered not for the first time if her blood ran red or black.”

— Anna Godbersen

She should have know that villains often come with pretty faces.

— Anna Godbersen

But in that moment she realized how false most smiles were and what a tremendous waste of time.

— Anna Godbersen

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York…

— Anna Godbersen

“The two men moved to either side of his shoulders, close enough that Henry smelled the smell of men who did not…

— Anna Godbersen

“Diana wore a men's bowler with the intials H. W. S. sewn into the lining and an old French army coat.”

— Anna Godbersen

Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.

— Anna Godbersen

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.

— Anna Godbersen

“It was like the color of his eyes, she supposed - not quite one shade or another, and utterly unlike anyone else's.”

— Anna Godbersen

Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.

— Anna Godbersen

“But I wanted to tell you before I left how completely abjectly sorry I am for all the pain I have caused…

— Anna Godbersen

We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in…

— Anna Godbersen

After Henry's treatment of her she wasn't sure that men could honestly love women but she wanted to believe it. She wanted…

— Anna Godbersen

Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms:…

— Anna Godbersen

“Teddy risked a look backward and nodded as he handed Henry his hat. The two men shook hands and then walked past…

— Anna Godbersen

He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at…

— Anna Godbersen

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing…

— Anna Godbersen

Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be…

— Anna Godbersen

“She wanted to walk slowly and smell the wafting perfumes of bouquets that men had bought for their sweethearts and watch couples…

— Anna Godbersen

Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the…

— Anna Godbersen

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer. Everything fades: the shimmer of gold over…

— Anna Godbersen

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites, While bad girls slink along in…

— Anna Godbersen

“She will be busy writing novels. As soon as she had has gotten far enough away from this frighteningly puritanical country, her…

— Anna Godbersen

“It is often advantageous to forget. Forget your wincing humiliations, forget life's blows, and get on. For blocks in every direction, down…

— Anna Godbersen

“The best heroines, she'd always believed, took their fate into their own hands.”

— Anna Godbersen

They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained ...

— Anna Godbersen

“The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color...”

— Anna Godbersen

You don’t need to marry a man with millions. You only need to be your exquisite self.

— Anna Godbersen

The headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.

— Anna Godbersen

That was the way love was, she guessed-it left you always unsteady on your feet.

— Anna Godbersen

As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.

— Anna Godbersen

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.

— Anna Godbersen

All really interesting girls invent themselves.

— Anna Godbersen

She had had no idea what it would do to her seeing him in a suit.

— Anna Godbersen