Alice Adams

“...I suppose about the only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody.””

— Booth Tarkington

“Men were just like sheep, and nothing was easier than for women to set up as shepherds and pen them up in a field.””

— Booth Tarkington

“Is this life?'Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and all her own. 'Is it life to spend your time imagining things that aren't so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to other people; why should I be the only one they never can happen to?””

— Booth Tarkington

“As with husbands and wives, so with many fathers and daughters, and so with some sons and mothers: the man will himself be cross in public and think nothing of it, nor will he greatly mind a little crossness on the part of the woman; but let her show agitation before any spectator, he is instantly reduced to a coward's slavery. Women understand that ancient weakness, of course; for it is one of their most important means of defense, but can be used ignobly.””

— Booth Tarkington

“how much a thing means to one man and how little it means to another ain’t the right way to look at a business matter.””

— Booth Tarkington

“So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have worn a placard,'Engaged'. She looked upon him as diners entering a restaurant look upon tables marked 'Reserved": the glance, slightly discontented, passes on at once.””

— Booth Tarkington

“You see?" she said. "I've been leading you without you knowing it. Of course that's because you're new to the town, and you give yourself up to the guidance of an old citizen.""I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care where I follow so long as I follow you.””

— Booth Tarkington

“We do keep looking ahead to things as if they’d finish something, but when we get to them, they don’t finish anything. They’re just part of going on.””

— Booth Tarkington

“I’ve quit dressing at them, and if they saw me they wouldn’t think what you want ’em to. It’s funny; but we don’t often make people think what we want ’em to, mama. You do thus and so; and you tell yourself, ‘Now, seeing me do thus and so, people will naturally think this and that’; but they don’t. They think something else”

— Booth Tarkington