Anna Godbersen quotes:

She was full of some strange energy that morning. Her every movement had purpose and life and she seemed to find satisfaction in every little thing.

Don't go looking for boys in the dark They will say pretty things then leave you with scars. Do go looking for boys in the park For that is where the true gentlemen are.

That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams. The girls of 1929.

Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.

That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.

So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow.

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

Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.

A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.

Marriage is a mystery that one would be wise not to solve too hastily.--- Marve De Jong, Love And Other Follies Of The Great Families Of Old New York

The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color -- oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples...

She was a vision in a white gown her dark hair forming a hazy halo around her rosy heart-shaped face. Her long lashes fluttered to touch her cheeks and then her eyes opened fully in his direction. Her small round mouth flexed in an immediate and knowing smile. That's the girl I'm going to marry Henry thought.

Diana knew it wouldn't be right, but then she told herself that things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.

She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

Her heart the damned thing had begun to race and she only hoped that the rapid inflation and deflation of her chest wasn't visible beneath her fitted bodice.

He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.

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

Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.

But I wanted to tell you before I left how completely abjectly sorry I am for all the pain I have caused you and that if I die you were the one true love of my life. By the time you read this I will be gone but please know I am still always at your side.... Yours forever Henery William Schoonmaker

A lady must retain always her composure. Even in a rainstorm, she must appear joyous and dry. When she loses her composure, then the respect of her peers and her staff will follow in short order.

All really interesting girls invent themselves.

Darling, don't be silly, your whole future is ahead of you. All you have to do is go out there and ask for a part- something small and reasonable just to start with. From there, no one can stop you. Don't feel bad about anything you've done, and for God's sake, have fun.

Even when a girl is married she still never completely leaves her mother and father's home.

Teddy risked a look backward and nodded as he handed Henry his hat. The two men shook hands and then walked past each other Teddy moving in the direction of Henry's room and Henry the hat pulled down over his face toward the Cutting carriage that was waiting by the curb.

What was it about that short creature with her wild hair and spurious air of purity and why would anyone much less two men love her and to such disastrous ends.

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

She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.

It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear.

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

She now saw that she wanted a boy to do more than follow her in blind devotion. She wanted a boy to challenge her, to tell her about things she'd never thought of, to show her new points of view.

Edith who had still not fully recovered from the debauchery at the Hayeses' had glaced at the letter before dinner but she apparently lacked the energy to pry. "Oh to be young as you " was all she'd said before going to bed early.

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.

I've always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we'll have.

It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.

Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.

It is a truth universally acknowledge that there will always be a gentleman to dance with, except at just the moment when you require one most.

Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer. Everything fades: the shimmer of gold over White Cove; the laughter in the night air; the lavender early morning light on the faces of skyscrapers, which had suddenly become so heroically tall. Every dawn seemed to promise fresh miracles, among other joys that are in short supply these days. And so I will try to tell you, while I still remember, how it was then, before everything changed-that final season of the era that roared.

He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tired to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time.

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

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

So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.

Well, if you weren't flirting with him"-his voice had now grown a little plaintive-"who was he, and what did you want with him anyway?" "If you are so determined to bore me, I may just have to go home." Astrid sighed carelessly, "What a shame, when I am wearing such a pretty dress.

In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites, While bad girls slink along in their shame- Everyone stares at them, everyone blames. But those bad girls sleep soundly at night, Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright, While our good girls toss and they turn- They lay awake for those who will burn.

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.

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

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

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

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

Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enought to bury her alive.

They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight.

She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.

I can't imagine what my life was before. I can't imagine ever being without you for very long again.

Interesting" people were her favorite hobby. She collected them: the type who did gay things late at night and smoked cigarettes in mixed company, those would have most scandalized her own mother.

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

Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings.

Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.

There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.

Life was a short window and there was no sense in doing the wrong thing over and over even if it was so difficult to stop.

He was just like summer, and she loved summer. If she had any wish, it would be to live a lifetime of summers.

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.

They will stop calling brides beautiful after todayâ??you have simply set the standard too high,' he said.

To look in the face of hard things and keep moving forward - that's what one has to do.

THE LUXE IS . . . Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn. Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions. White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups. This is Manhattan in 1899.

The world is such a marvel-it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.

...she considered herself unconventional...

Oh yes, well, I find myself unconventional everywhere.

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

There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.

The living are made of nothing but flaws. The dead, with each passing day in the afterlife, become more and more impeccable to those who remain earthbound.

Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.

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

Henry turned his hat in his hands but went on looking at Diana in a way that made her want to crawl into his arms and stay there forever.

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

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

The value of secrets is ever fluctuating although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told.

Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.

A man is made in the rough-and-tumble of the world a lady emerges from the flossy back rooms of her own imagination.

You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes." Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you." "No.

After Henry's treatment of her she wasn't sure that men could honestly love women but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to be told pretty things and for the frightening clip of her heart to slow to something more reasonable.