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(Normal women. “You look perfectly normal to me,” Roxanne had said, scrutinizing me the first time I had visited her after my return from Europe. “What do you mean?” I had asked. “Your letters were very confusing. So high, and then so low. From the way you described yourself, I really thought you’d…

Leonardo’s invidious compliments only provoked more of my bookish rhetoric

They say it’s worse to be ugly. I think it must only be different. If you’re pretty, you are subject to one set of assaults; if you’re plain you are subject to another. Pretty, you, may have more men to choose from, but you have more anxiety too, knowing your looks, which really have nothing to do …

It hadn’t turned out that way. I had not been able to manage on my own—couldn’t even mail a letter or visit the Prado. But if I could feel for a man what I felt for the stranger Manolo, then how could I possibly return to my dreary husband? Compromise was one thing, hypocrisy another. I couldn’t do…

My grandmothers, teachers, uncles and aunts, and especially my father, were always encouraging me with their constant homilies: if at first you don’t succeed try try again; hard work moves mountains