“Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity someone he didn't know, quite another to face the same dilemma with someone he knew intimately. That was the trouble with beds. They turned strangers into intimates more quickly than ten years of polite teas in parlours.”

“Oh, that feels good! I don't know who invented ties and then insisted a man was only properly dressed when he wore one, but if I ever meet him, I'll strangle him with his own invention”

“Age brought wisdom, but it also brought a genuine gratitude for the happiness of sharing life with someone as much liked as loved.”

“The best thing about being 40 is that you can appreciate 25-year-old men more.”

“There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.”

“There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart. ”

“Yet there's something ominous about turning sixty-five. Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will occur; it has occurred.”