“She was restless. She drove a little too fast, swam a little too far offshore. She hitchhiked. She skied recklessly. While Sylvia's rabid perfectionism was very real, she was far from the good-girl persona she worked so hard to cultivate.” — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“I've lived long enough to know that life doesn't always stick to the rules...The perfectly impossible and absolutely ridiculous keep happening all the time.” — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“I suppose that was an example of close attention to detail that is common to writers and artists. It is imperative, whether consciously or… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“The serious Sylvia was agonizing over the execution of the Rosenbergs and McCarthyism; others were delighting to dream over trousseau lingerie at Vanity Fair's… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“When I was doing the Mademoiselle application my husband would peer over my shoulder and say, "What are you doing competing with the best… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“It was in this atmosphere of boozy wistfulness and dizzy exhaustion that Sylvia- along with Carol LeVarn- took her suitcase to the Barbizon roof and tossed each slip, stocking, sheath, and skirt into the night sky. "We took the elevator to the roof," recalls Carol, who refrained from tossing her own clothes off the Barbizon. "We stood there by the… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share
“Life is amazingly simplified,” she wrote in her journal, “now that the recalcitrant forsythia has at last decided to come and blurt out springtime… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“New York is unruly, tangled. The city woos first, then mangles, then pastes back together in a fresh, dazzling mosaic.” — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“Judgement is so often a thwarted, frustrated expression of envy.” — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her Panic Bird- her total lack of nostalgia. She had no armor. This left her especially vulnerable in New York, where she was removed from the context of… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share
“With headlines like "Marry Now or Never," the specter of marriage loomed. It was a constant fear, a threat, a reminder. But Sylvia wasn't… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“That none discussed their doubts, that they assumed everyone else was just having a grand time of it and felt at ease and enjoying… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
“This is the story of an electrically alive young woman on the brink of her adult life. An artist equally attuned to the light… — Elizabeth Winder Copy Share Image
