“...the way the diamond caused people to reasses her--their palpable appreciation that Drew was loved by someone, was someone worth loving”

“Just like with love. It's all or nothing. ... That's why love is dangerous. We stand up for love. We take risks. Well, you of all people know about that - your own Soviet Russia, an entire nation rearranged to discourage love for anything other than one's country.' Because love caused people to think for themselves, to look out for themselves and their loved ones.”

“How lucky Drew was to have this mother of hers, this constant, reliable, if at times irritating presence in her life--this mother, like so many other mothers, beloved and blamed. Lucky she was to have experience, through her mother, the twisted intricaciesof deep, and deeply complex, love.”

“...She looked at the people around her and felt not just that she was surrounded by strangers, but that she herself was strange, somehow, that something kept her from ever fully bridging the gap between who she was and who all these other people, making their way through the very same day, were.”

“...there are only two things that really matter in life. Literature and love.”

“It wasn't that she didn't believe in love; but she no longer believed in it for herself.”

“No, solitude did not trouble her. She could spend long minutes gazing out the window, hours listening to the BBC on the public radio station. She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth of space and freedom, much of an entire day hers alone.”