"He [Anne's father] was a lapsed Presbyterian and a believing Republican." (8)

"Every woman stayed alone in her house in those days, like a coin in a safe." (16)

"In the leafy distance up Edgerton I could see a black phalanx. It blocked the sidewalk; it rolled footlessly forward like a tank. The nuns were coming. They had no bodies, and imitation faces. I quitted the swing and banged through back door and rain to Mother in the kitchen." (34)

"I was ten years old now, up into the double numbers, where I would likely remain till I died. I am awake now forever, I thought suddenly; I have converged with myself in the present." (69)

"A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside her skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her...