“Instead, he was astonished by what he had: the chance to sit beside this woman in the late afternoon light while she read.”

“He sat by a gray window in the gray light in an abandoned house in the late afternoon and read old newspapers while the boy slept. The curious news. The quaint concerns.”

“He is still, at times, astonished by her. She may be the most intelligent woman in England, he thinks. Her books may be read for centuries.”

“Alexander knew that before he had light instead of darkness, he had to deserve light instead of darkness.”

“On Ira Gershwin: I remember when he was given the manuscript of a novel written by a woman friend who had hopes of having it published. To his astonishment it turned out to be the dirtiest, most pornographic book he had ever read. When the lady mentioned that she intended to use a nom de plume, Ira suggested she call herself Henrietta Miller.”

“After he'd gone, she'd suffered a momentary, nearly immobilizing flash of panic--what if the Hunters somehow managed to find her while he was gone?--but it dissipated swiftly, leaving her astonished to realize that she truly trust him to keep her safe, at least from everything besides himself.”