Kristin Dodd

“She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“The fact is, I think, that my friends really didn't know. They didn't know because they didn't want to know; but they didn't know. They could have found out, at the time, only if they had wanted to very badly.”
― Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter