Vivian Gornick

It was then that I understood the fairy tale about the princess and the pea. She wasn't after the prince, she was after the pea. That moment when she feels the pea beneath twenty mattresses, that is her moment of definition. It is the very meaning of her journey, why she has traveled so far, what she has come to confirm: the unholy dissatisfaction that will keep life permanently at bay.
- Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City (pp. 54-55)