“Our conversation starts out pretty normal. Matthew does most of the talking, as usual. He tells me about Wesley. He tells me everything. Well, almost everything. I was lucky enough to stop him before he got into the explicit details. Wesley also helped by nudging him with his shoulder. He even covered Matthew's mouth when the conversation took a sudden turn because the word package was used. Yeah, the conversation went from sweet and romantic to soft-core porn in about two seconds.”

“MRS. ALLONBY. It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no conversation at all.LADY STUTFIELD. I adore silent men.MRS ALLONBY. Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.”

“If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.”

“Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it.”

“Which meant I got left with Quinn yet again. Given the time he was taking to make his decision, I wasn't exactly happy about that. I mean, putting me with him was like flashing chocolate my way then telling me I couldn't have it. It was just plain mean.”

“He started to do that, started to inform me of everything; the inconsequential, the meaningful; conversations that ended in a cul-de-sac of unanswerable rhetoric. i think it was because I knew everything about him, had read it all - the beautiful, the sordid, the all of his book. I had been his editor for 5 years, and now it seemed, had become his editor away from the printed page.”

“My father used to say, 'If you want to know the artist, look at the art'. He was usually talking about Stanley Matthews or Don Bradman when he said it.”