Quotes from Alice Steinbach

there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into." Eight

After all, I told myself, anyone willing and able to pay seven hundred dollars a pop to stay overnight could walk through the Ritz's imposing place Vendôme entrance. But only those carrying an employee's identification card were allowed through the back door on rue Cambon.

There's such joy and fearless in that face, isn't there? It's like the look you see on a child's face before the age of reason sets in.

Sometimes it was hard for me to connect the boy I knew—the skinny smart kid who collected lead soldiers and pursued Boy Scout merit badges—with the phenomenally successful man he'd become. But sooner or later, when we were together, some remark would inevitably trigger childhood memories and then we'd be off, zipping down a path that existed now only for the two of us.

What I took it to mean was: women would be better off when they no longer needed men more than they needed their own independent identities.

Here, there was an air of a country village. An apricot-colored cat sat on top of a fence, bathing himself in the sun. A woman entered a courtyard, her face veiled behind a huge bunch of lilies and baby's breath. The sounds of Mozart drifted down from a window. It was a pleasant surprise; I hadn't known such neighborhoods existed in Montmartre.

What I see is a woman who is not thinking about observing life but experiencing it.

I suspected, however, that I wasn't homesick for anything I would find at home when I returned. The longing was for what I wouldn't find: the past and all the people and places there were lost to me.

A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate and powerful than speech will allow.

And who's to say that just because something lasts only a short time, it has little value?

It is one of the strongest bonds, I think, that can spring up between people: sharing a passion for certain books and their authors.

Women would be better off when they no longer needed men more than they needed their own independent identities...How long a time it took me after my divorce to understand that being alone is not the same as being lonely.

His presence made me feel self-concious: of my appearance, of the way I was sitting, of my movements and gestures...It was the behavior of a woman reacting to a man who attracts her.

What if more of life could be like that? Like the last slow dance, where, to echo T.S. Eliot, a lifetime burns in every moment.

Freedom has its dangers as well as its joys. And the sooner we learn to get up after a fall, the better off we'll be.

It used to surprise me, the intensity with which I still remembered these distant memories. But when I entered my fifties...I understood their enduring clarity....In the end, what adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.

What adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.

As I set out each day, I felt like a young child again. One who hadn't yet learned the rules of manmade time; the rules of clocks and calendars, of weekdays and weekends. Except the primitive markers of day and night, time lay ahead of me in a continuous, undefined mass.

I'm a woman in search on an adventure

In many ways I was an independent woman. For years I'd made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.

I had forgotten how wonderful it is to stand on a bridge and catch the scent of rain in the air. I had forgotten how much I need to be a part of water, wind, sky.

At first the lives of women frightened me. They seemed so fragile, so dependent on fathers and husbands and brothers and lovers. Gradually, though, I noticed how supple their lives were beneath the surface. I saw, too, that sooner or later, by choice or by chance most women faced the task of adapting to a future on their own. When at my most optimistic, I thought of it as independence, in darker moods, as survival. Either way, women had to do it.

What is the purpose of memory? Is it a trick to make sure we don't forget who we are by reminding us of who we were?

Life is like that I thought, as I turned the corner to my building. Freedom has its danger as well as its joys. And the sooner we learn to get up after a fall, the better off will be.