“There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.”

“There's nothing like competing for your boyfriend's attention with an emotionally needy sibling to make you feel like the worst sort of evil psycho-bitch.”

“There was nothing the least bit radical about her. In fact, she was the most conventional creature alive. She believed in true love, and loyalty to one's monarch, and death before dishonor. It was just that, sometimes, things didn't quite turn out as one would have wished. In those cases, there was nothing to do but carry on. And on and on and on.”

“Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, "incoming!”

“It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature.”

“Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.”

“This was what the poets couldn't put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.”