“It was easy to conjure him up this morning, when everything was quiet and still. A little, ginger-bearded man; she had been taller than him by half a head. She had never felt the slightest physical attraction towards him. 'What was love, after all?' thought Parminder, as a gentle breeze ruffled the tall hedge of leyland cypresses that enclosed the Jawandas’ bigback lawn. Was it love when somebody filled a space in your life that yawned inside you, once they had gone?'I did love laughing', thought Parminder. 'I really miss laughing.'And it was the memory of laughter that, at last, made the tears flow from her eyes. They trickled down her nose and into her coffee, where they made little bulletholes, swiftly erased. She was crying because she never seemed to laugh anymore (...).”

“Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.”

“There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You've never even accepted that the man is ugly,' Kainene said. There was a small smile on her face and then she was laughing, and Olanna could not help but laugh too, because it was not what she had wanted to hear and because hearing it had made her feel better.”

“Was it love when somebody filled a space in your life that yawned inside you, once they had gone?”

“As his widow, she knew who she was and what she had inherited. She had loved him in her way and sometimes missed him. She knew what words like "loved" and "missed" meant when she thought of her husband. When she thought of Blunt, on the other hand, she was unsure what anything meant except the sonnets she had written about their love affair.”

“Black would trust her with his secrets. He would protect hers. But did she trust him with her heart? Could she?She thought of Wendell, and no longer felt any remorse for her feelings. She did not love him. Her heart had been taken two years ago, by a stranger she thought she had conjured up in the atmosphere of her imagination.He had asked her to trust him—and there was only one way she knew how. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out the crimson gown.No regrets. No seduction. No scandal. Only love.”