It was a dark place, with malodorous chambers, miserable food, and a lobby ceiling decorated with as much gilt and gesso as the Vatican chapels.

That was their marriage then-not the highest paving of the stair, the clatter of Italian fountains, the wind in the alien olive trees, but this: a jay-naked male and female discussing their bowels.

My mother taught me never to speak about money when there was a shirtful, and I've always been very reluctant to speak about it when there was any scarcity, so I cannot paint much of a picture of what ensued in the next six months.

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

We travel by plane, oftener than not, and yet the spirit of our country [United States of America] seems to have remained a country of railroads.

When they were on their uppers, she worked- first at the Steuben glass store, on Fifth Avenue, and then she went to Jensen's, where she got into trouble by insisting on her right to smoke.

Children drown, beautiful women are mangled in automobile accidents, cruise ships founder, and men die lingering deaths in mines and submarines, but you will find none of this in my accounts.

At the first sound of the priest's voice in the vestar-ium she was on her feet and she fired out her amens and her mercies in a stern and resonant voice, timed well ahead of the rest of the congregation as if she were involved in a sort of ecclesiastical footrace.

I've broken all the good promises. When I was a little girl, I used to make promises on the new moon and the first snow. I've broken everything good.

Her passion for independence had reached into her manipulation of their joint checking account.