| I will share with you some of my favorite quotes from this novel so far.
"Who you love is your own pretty self and what you really love is knowing you're pretty." (46)
This is said by Lois Farrow to her daughter, Jacy. At this moment, Lois is telling Jacy that she doesn't really love Duane, and that she only loves herself and how he makes her feel pretty. Lois says that the only reason Jacy is "in love" with Duane is because he tells her she is beautiful all the time. This quote really shows how naiive many of the people back then were- all they cared about was money and looks. I believe that this shows how all women picked their mates back in the day- they picked the one that would become the wealthiest. Later, Lois goes on to describe how she scared her husband into becoming rich and how now "he's done nothing but run around trying to find things to please me. He's never found the right things but he made a million dollars looking." Money runs her relationship and she's trying to make it run her daughters. I just hope that Jacy does not leave Duane for Lester, who has much more money. We'll see.
"It took a rich, fast crowd to go swimming naked, and Jacy always prided herself on belonging to the fastest crowd there was, moral or immoral. Indeed, for a rich, pretty girl like herself the most immoral thing imaginable would be to belong to a slow crowd. That would be wasting opportunities, and nothing was more immoral than waste." (83)
This is being thought by Jacy when she is contemplating whether or not to go to the party with Lester and ditch Duane. I like this quote because she is being very ironic. She says that it would be immoral to waste opportunities, but the real immoral thing was going to a naked party. She never once thinks about the improperness of the party, and she is constantly thinking of how it would put her in the fastest crowd there was. She only cares about being in the greatest, most "popular" crowd around. Jacy does not take into consideration how her boyfriend would react, or how it would hurt him, and I think that says alot about her character and her personality. She clearly does not have morals, for if she did she would not go to that party- that's why this quote is ridiculous and ironic.
"Loneliness is like ice. After you've been lonely long enough you don't even realize you're cold, but you are. It's like I was a refrigerator that had never been defrosted at all-never. All these years the ice has just been getting thicker. You can't melt all that ice in a few days, I don't care how good a man you are... I don't know, maybe at the center of me there's some ice that never will melt, maybe it's just been there too long. But you mustn't worry. You didn't put it there." (126)
This is said by Ruth to Sonny after she realizes that he is hesitant to make love to her again. I really like this quote because of the weird comparison that she uses. I don't think that many people would think to compare loneliness to ice in a refrigerator- and that is why it is so strong and memorable. Like ice in a refrigerator, her loneliness kept building up, until there was a thick wall of it. And she did not expect him (Sonny) to get rid of that ice all in one day, but maybe over the course of time, it would eventually defrost and make her able to love again. I love this metaphor because she is showing sadness and loneliness through it, but at the same time she is reassuring Sonny that he had nothing to do with it and that there is still hope for him and her.
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