“I can be nothing worse and nothing better than who I am...Elly.”

“It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was. ”

“They are between. Not what they used to be, and not what they have become. In those times, they are nothing. And I am invisible, and I am nothing too. That is the true demimonde, Lucien, and the secret is, it is not always desperate and dark. Sometimes it is just nothing. No burden of potential or regret. There are worse things than being nothing, my friend.”

“Nothing better for the hormones and worse for the heart than the right boy at the right time.”

“Is this better or worse than being married and living in the suburbs? Better or worse? Who can tell?”

“Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.”