“He was sound asleep, his long legs stretched out in front of him, the blessed fire blazing, an empty bottle of wine by his side. He hadn't been shaved recently, and he looked rumpled, dissolute and...”

“It's a good thing you're an aging orphan," he murmured, gently pushing the hair away from her face. "I don't have to wait around to get anyone's permission.""Permission for what, you rat bastard?" ...”

“What have you done with Hetty?" he demanded."Listened to her incessant prattle, complaints, tears, demands, artless conversation and recriminations for more than twenty-four hours. You will be plea...”

“I lied. I do that, you know, when it suits me. I would have thought you'd realized that by now.”

“After all, if spinster chaperons required their own spinster chaperons there simply wouldn't be enough to go around.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”

“Every great love starts with a great story...”

“I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extend...”

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”