"Until recently, I lived in a world where lost things could always be replaced.  But it has been made overwhelmingly clear to me now that anything you think is yours by right can vanish, and what you can do about that is nothing at all.  The future I thought I was meticulously crafting for years has disappeared, and with it have gone my ideas about the kind of life I'd imagined I was due.

People have been telling me since I was a little girl that I was too fervent, too forceful, too much.  I thought I had harnessed the power of my own strength and greed and love in a life that could contain it.  But it was exploded."
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"But you can never tell with shadows.  You have to be vigilant, always, because maybe you're crazy, but maybe you're right." 
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"Women of my generation were given the lavish gift of our own agency by feminism - a belief that we could decide for ourselves how we wold live, what would become of us.  Writers may be particularly susceptible to this outlook, because we are accustomed to the power of authorship.  (Even if you write nonfiction, you still control how the story unfolds.)  Life was complying with my story.

There were shadows I saw out of the corner of my eye that looked like problems waiting to become real, but you never know with shadows."
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"She grew up as I did, with her own bedroom, in a house with a garden and a green lawn, but with a sense that ruin was at a safe distance."
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising.  We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers.  We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills.  But we can't have it all." 
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"We marvel at the unexpected ways people find each other."
-The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"As everything else has fallen apart, what has stayed intact is something I always had, the thing that made me a writer: curiosity.  Hope."
-The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy