“They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.”

“By the time I went to bed I wasn't taken in by no Princess or no desire for no Princess and nobody's disapproval and I felt glad and slept well.”

“The regrets about all she had let go flooded her. Where had all that enterprise gone? All that energy? Why had she never traveled? Or had more sex when she could? She had bleached and annihilated every waking moment of the last twenty years. Anything, rather than feel.”

“Even now she could not muster much angst toward Lord Devon. She had experienced twenty-and-four kisses in her lifetime stolen by gentlemen, bohemians, even royalty from all the continental nations, men who could not kiss without trying to maul her. But number twenty-five — Wilhelm — had set her aside despite his obvious arousal. Rather chivalrous, in a way.”

“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”

“Can you imagine a princess who works as a counter girl in a fast-food restaurant? I'm sure there's one somewhere. Imagine if all the people who came in to place orders were to realize that their meal was served by a princess! I don't think most people could handle it.''I think it would be hard for a real princess to have to do menial work like that,' Blanche reflected. 'She might think it was beneath her.''Oh, but a real princess would know that hard work ennobles the soul,' Rose objected. 'That would be one of the signs.”