Antonella

“You think she needs a chaperone?” When they didn’t answer, the nun tutted disapprovingly. “Let me explain something to you, Mrs. Attaviano, and I hope your daughter is listening, though I cannot be sure. Morally speaking, the only chaperone a young girl of good character requires is her own sense of decency and pride. She who possesses these qualities doesn’t need a chaperone – ever. She who lacks them...” The nun laughed lightly. “Argus himself couldn’t chaperone her.”
― Paullina Simons, Children of Liberty

“Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
“Well?” Ben nudged him. “Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?”
“Clearly Thomas Paine. I’d be asleep now in my bed.”
“Do you remember the name of the street they live on?”
“Let’s see...Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?”
“Canal Street! Thank you.”
“I’m going to stop speaking.”
“Harry, admit it, if you weren’t so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself.”
“Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself.”
“Exactly!”
“Ugh.”
“I’m surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?”
“Stunned.”
― Paullina Simons, Children of Liberty

“The weary Italian woman nodded at her children behind her. “Where we came from, everybody lives only one kind of life. Alessandro said he wanted his children to choose the life, not the life to choose the children. And also,” she added, panting, slowing down and wiping her brow, “he said America is the only place in the world where even the poor can be smart.”
― Paullina Simons, Children of Liberty

“Harry nearly prayed it wasn’t one of her friends who smelled like the beach and books and brine. He inhaled when they stopped for the light, and was simultaneously relieved and agitated to realize, no, it was her.”
― Paullina Simons, Children of Liberty