“She knew far too much about him. She knew everything. Like how the royal ladies-in-waiting swapped bawdy jokes about the sad size of the duke's scepter.”

“His face, like everything she knew about him, was purely contradictory. That cherubic mouth with those penetrating eyes: he was too lovely to be menacing, but too intense to be innocent.”

“And, like a fool, she kissed him back. Kissed him a way that would leave no doubt about the way she felt about him. Kissed him because she knew the chances were slim she'd have very many kisses like that in her lifetime. Which is a sad thing when you're only seventeen.”

“But in my defense, I knew enough about her to know I wanted to know everything else; I knew as much about her as she wanted me to know; I knew as much about her as anyone ever knows about anyone. And isn't love just curiosity at the beginning anyway?”

“Mama was amazing like that; I spent most of my teenage years assuming that she knew nothing about me, and all of my twenties realizing that she knew everything.”

“The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.”