I have learned to mistrust symmetry and the decimal system. There was once a time when I would do anything I chose for which I had ten good reasons, or again, anything for which I could find no reason not to, a time when I would not resist a dare.

I am more cautious now. I have children and responsibilities. I am suspicious of reasons and hostile to dares. The evidence suggests that nature is probably unbalanced, that ten is no truer than four, that reason does not prevail.

Why was everything nice he did for me a bribe or a favor, while my kindnesses to him were my duty? Now he was going to try to stall off my revelations with sausages, buy my silence with anemones. [...]

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 it: couldn’t stay in Spain, couldn’t return to Frank, couldn’t survive alone. That left me nothing. Nada.

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 with you, will disappear. [...]

(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 been disfigured or something. And then Frank told me you’d got sick and gone crazy.” “Crazy!” I had gasped. “A man thinks you’re crazy if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with him!” We had laughed over that, but it was true.)