“sixty years old and lives for the 3 f's--friends, family, and France.”

“From an early age I had enjoyed words, but as a lawyer, I was responsible for filing them down and forcing them to give up their last kernel of meaning.”

“Rien, that's what you get without hard work, rien.”

“After all these years, still a spot within her fluttered at his touch, and his voice, throaty and hushed in her ear, tickled along her spine. Naked, they walked to the bedroom. Beneath the covers, they fumbled with each other’s bodies, arms and legs, backbones and hip bones, until they found the familiar, tender lines like the creases in an old map that has been folded and refolded over the years.”

“Doubt crouched over his shoulder, ready to take him by the throat, whispering in his ear, You are an old man. An old, old man.”

“In my old age, I see that life is often more fantastic and terrible than stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”

“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”