“Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.”

“The headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.”

“She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.”

“Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.”

“She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.”

“Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.”

“She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.”