“Did she always have something to read in front of her so she wouldn't have to look at anything else?”

“Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.”

“Your woman tells me you will hunt me down and eat my marrow while I live.""Did she?" Charles looked at her, and she saw the approval in his face. She doubted anyone else would have read anything at all. His voice was a caress, just for her. "Would you like that, love?”

“Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.”

“So she forgave him. And instead she berated herself for her suspicion, for her snooping. For the things she promised herself she wouldn't do, the feelings she wouldn't have.”

“She was trying to say something else; she was trying to say that the inability to articulate what one feels in any satisfactory way is one of our enduring tragedies. It wouldn't have been much, and it wouldn't have been useful, but it would have been something that reflected the gravity and the sadness inside her. Instead, she had snapped at him for being a loser. It was as if she were trying to find a handhold on the boulder of her feelings, and had merely ended up with grit under her nails.”