“In this age of one-night stands, virtual relationships and text sex, a wedding was a modern miracle.”
“We enter into a relationship with any text we hear or read, like the relationship with a friend, a lover, or an enemy. A relationship is the ultimate meaning of the text.”
“Here we stop. On the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, a finger to his lips.”
“There is no pleasure in being "duped" by the text into a helpless viewer, but there is considerable pleasure in selectively viewing the text for points of identification and distance, in controlling one's relationship with the represented characters in the light of one's own social and psychological context.”
“The only thing Luo was really good at was telling stories. A pleasing talent to be sure, but a marginal one, with little future in it. Modern man has moved beyond the age of the Thousand-and-One-Nights, and modern societies everywhere, whether socialist or capitalist, have done away with the old storytellers — more's the pity.”
“Saul tapped his wife's obstinate chin. "Mrs. Benedict, you certainly are. You promised to obey.""That was thirty years ago! Before the wedding ceremony caught up with the modern age.""Well, I for one am holding you to that. Gondola for two, in the moonlight, with champagne and roses.”