“It was not that the woman boasted. Quite the opposite. She was modest to a fault, the fault being she insinuated her modesty, deftly, into almost any conversation, proclaiming her insignificance and ignorance, thereby assuring a correction.”

“A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.”

“I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.”

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”—my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault—as she pounded her fist to her chest three times as if pounding shut a door to keep her guilt from escaping.”

“a man cannot embrace a woman’s faults until he loves her. A woman embraces the faults and then falls in love.”

“I hoped that she knew the truth--that it wasn't her fault, or my fault, or even his fault. No matter how many times I wanted to believe it was. This was my life, and this is how it was ending.”