“Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn't president of General Motors is because she's chosen not to be.”

“I loved to take her hair down and she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down to kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind a falls.”

“She handed him the blankets and the ground sheet and he shook them out, then put them down under the trees. Angie got down on her knees and spread the ground sheet over the leaves, then the blankets.'You never forget do you? I mean about seeing things first.''Hope I never.'He was oddly uncomfortable, hesitant. 'Good way to lose your hair, not noticing things.'He sat down and pulled off his boots. The cottonwoods whispered more softly. The squirrel gave one short inquiring chatter, then was silent.The lone coyote spoke to the sky and the stream rustled busily about the stones. A bit of mud fell into the stream with a faint plop.It was night and there was no sound. Or anyway, not very much." (p 154)”

“General Motors, General Mills, General Foods, general ignorance, general apathy, and general cussedness elect presidents and Congressmen and maintain them in power.”

“Where is this conversation going?” Because she wanted to finish it, strip him naked, and finally get him where she’d always wanted him. Oddly, a heart shaped bed was never in her fantasies, but she was okay with improvising.”

“Laura decided to send a cable to Lady Honoria after all, on the chance that she might still reach her in Baden-Baden. But while she was planning what to say, she felt, all of a sudden, the room start to spin about her, dizzying her, so that she fell back across the bed and across the pillows wondering what was happening to her until everything went as pitch-black as night and she sank down and down and down into a dark, endless tunnel.”