"I'd learned myself by the age of sixteen that just as girls guarded their virginity, boys guarded something less tangible which they called Themselves."
"Everyone knew in the 1950s why a girl from a nice family left home. The meaning of her theft of herself from her parents was clear to all - as well as what she'd be up to in that room of her own."
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Source: Joyce Johnson (1999). “Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir”, p.86, Penguin
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