“The notion originated with Daisy’s suggestion that we hire five bath-rooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as “a place to have a mint julep.” Each of us said over and over that it was a “crazy idea.”—we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and thought, or pretended to think, that we were being very funny...”

“Open the whisky, Tom,' she ordered, 'and I'll make you a mint julep. Then you won't seem so stupid to yourself... Look at the mint!”

“People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.”

“We ruined ourselves-I have never honestly thought that we ruined each other.”

“It'd be a good setting to jump overboard,' said Dick mildly.'Wouldn't it?' agreed Nicole hastily. 'Let's borrow life-preservers and jump over. I think we should do something spectacular. I feel that all our lives have been too restrained.”

“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was ....”

“We haven’t met for many years, said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be."Five years next November."The automatic quality set us all back at least another minute.”