“you once liked me, didn't you?, he asked.LIKED you- I LOVED you. Everybody loved you. You could've had anybody you wanted for the asking.”

“I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night.”

“Think how you love me,' she whispered. 'I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember.'You'll always be like this to me.'Oh no; but promise me you'll remember.' Her tears were falling. 'I'll be different, but somewhere lost inside me there'll always be the person I am tonight.”

“You're not in love with me. You never wanted to marry me, did you?' 'It was the twilight,' he said wonderingly.”

“She had achieved the elusiveness that gives hidden significance to the least significant remarks.“Is it like you felt toward me in Paris?”“I feel comfortable and happy when I’m with you. In Paris it was different. But you never know how you once felt. Do you?”

“I'm sorry I was short with him--but I don't like a man to approach me telling me it for my sake."Maybe it was," said Wylie"It's poor technique.""I'd all for it," said Wylie. "I'm vain as a woman. If anybody pretends to be interested in me, I'll ask for more. I like advice."Stahr shook his head distastefully. Wylie kept on ribbing him--he was one of those to whom this privilege was permitted. "You fall for some kinds of flattery," he said. "this 'little Napoleon stuff.'""It makes me sick," said Stahr, "but it's not as bad as some man trying to help you.""If you don't like advice, why do you pay me?""That's a question of merchandise," said Stahr. "I'm a merchant. I want to buy what's in your mind.""You're no merchant," said Wylie. "I knew a lot of them when I was a publicity man, and I agree with Charles Francis Adams.""What did he say?""He knew them all--Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Astor--and he said there wasn't one he'd care to meet again in the hereafter. Well--they haven't improved since then, and that's why I say you're no merchant.""Adams was probably a sourbelly," said Stahr. "He wanted to be head man himself, but he didn't have the judgement or else the character." "He had brains," said Wylie rather tartly."It takes more than brains. You writers and artists poop out and get all mixed up, and somebody has to come in and straighten you out." He shrugged his shoulders. "You seem to take things so personally, hating people and worshipping them--always thinking people are so important-especially yourselves. You just ask to be kicked around. I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it--on the inside.”

“It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”