“I grew to judge every purchase by how many bronze screws I could buy for the boat if I didn't spend on this or made do without that.”

“Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids.”

“I had come to worry about those women who were full-time mothers and homemakers by choice. Did other, more career-minded women have the right to devalue them . . . ? Maybe it was time to slow down and look at the role restrictions imposed not only on women but the men around them, to search for the balance that could promote self-sufficiency . . .”

“The determination that is his biggest strength . . . is also at times his fatal flaw. Like an unthinking machine, he'll just keep shoving, not realizing a step back, a one-night pause, could let some obstacle move out of the way and smooth his path.”

“It was a rather dark shade of gray, his declaration, but I didn't think I'd ever heard anything more romantic than Colin telling me he'd spend his money, break laws, do anything he had to, to give me what I wanted.”

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

“In fact,I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan.”