“Russell made a comment to Charlotte about how she struck him as being really kind of healthy, in an emotional way, which wasn't completely surprising -- she knew she was fairly adroit at making people think she had it going on in that way (which gets into another whole thing about whether that was really a useful trait, which in fact she was pretty sure it wasn't, considering that maybe she could actually get some help from people, if she were willing to admit she needed any).”

“Aunt Helen Beck had many intentions about her death. She was about being dead the way some people are about being British - she wasn't, and it seemed she would never be, but it was clearly something she aspired to, since all the people she respected were.”

“For one thing, she hadn't exactly chosen a field; although she has since childhood imagined picking up her Oscar, the category has never been determined. There was some thought that by the time she grew up they would give out Oscars for Best Novel (and that by then she would have written one), or that maybe she would just get some kind of honorary Oscar for her distinctive life observations made in everyday conversations, or the occasional letter. ”

“Charlotte is the sort of person who's inclined to feel guilty imagining so much as a kiss between her and someone who's already involved, the sort of person who can't really even manage a fantasy about a movie star who might be married, much as she finds, let's say, Andy Garcia to be worth imagnining, Charlotte is the sort of person who will have to get Andy Garcia divorced, within the fantasy but having nothing to do with having met her, he has to be divorced prior to having met her in order for her to think about kissing him, and so Charlotte tends to find it easier to just fantasize about celebrities she knows are single than to go to all that trouble. ”

“She was like a drug. The most addicting kind, and he had a problem—he was pretty sure that she was developing feelings for him. He had no idea what to do with that, or with is own feelings, which were definitely getting in his way. This whole "no emotional attachment" thing had gone straight to shit. Because Mallory Quinn was emotionally attached to every person she ever met, and she had a way of making that contagious. He craved contact with her in a way that he wasn't experienced with.”

“Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.”

“Smart to avoid being with anyone she might actually really feel something for, who might actually really feel something for her. Smart to avoid getting involved with people she knew she could -”