“If she could only find a well-educated, Shakespeare-quoting bad boy who still had a thing for sexy tatoos and maybe a mild leather fetish, she might at least have a shot at avoiding her probable future as a crazy old cat lady.”

“...And how that girl did talk against time to make us think she was crazy about her Louie. She called attention to his honesty and his ability and his nose and the shape of his feet and his blue blood and his energy and what-have-you, and all the time, I was dying to quote that smart old Billy Shakespeare who was just as wordy as she was: 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

“Still staring at the woman in the mirror, I hung up the phone. She looked as if she was going to cry. I felt bad for her, that woman with the dark hair, the one who only ever wore black and white. The one who might have been pretty if she'd only take care of herself, if only she weren't smarter, if only she didn't earn more money. I felt sorry for her but envied her, too, because she, at least, could cry and I could not.”

“Did someone actually have to do bad things to be a bad boy, or was it all about the potential? If it was the potential that counted, then maybe it was the restraint that was so sexy, knowing that he could do something dangerous and powerful but had the restraint not to.”

“When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming , no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming, she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.”

“The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service — she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:”