Julia

“Her first ball! She was only at the beginning of everything. It seemed to her that she had never known what the night was like before. Up till now it had been dark, silent, beautiful very often – oh, yes – but mournful somehow. Solemn. And now it would never be like that again – it had opened dazzling bright.”
― Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories

“We, perhaps, were still innocent. And perhaps innocence has something crude, pedantic and affected about it, as if we were all dressed in plus fours and long socks.”
― Fleur Jaeggy, Sweet Days of Discipline

“Dark girls, fair girls were patting their hair, tying ribbons again, tucking handkerchiefs down the fronts of their bodices, smoothing marble-white gloves. And because they were all laughing it seemed to Leila that they were all lovely.”
― Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories

“She would remember for ever. It even gave her a pang to see her cousin Laurie throw away the wisps of tissue paper he pulled from the fastenings of his new gloves. She would like to have kept those wisps as a keepsake, as a remembrance.”
― Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories