Our ambitions were, nonetheless, what those of any sensible group of women at that time, perhaps at any modern time, ought to have been: to become safe and successful; to marry someone safe and successful; to have for our children some sort of worldly safety and success. From time to time, however, there is something, I don't know, wistful, about how it has turned out. Not just Brecht's great ship of eight sales and the fifty cannon. The other ships. Perhaps the tall ships, the fleet, the craft, the other ships that don't come in.

Author: Renata Adler