“One Valentine's Day I woke up to find that my husband had laid a trail of red hearts from the bed and halfway around the house to my present. The gift was small because we didn't have much money but I was touched to the heart by the effort he had made to surprise and please me.”

“(On having being just proposed to)'Have you been thinking of this for long?' she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally.'Let's say it crept up on me,' he suggested lightly.That didn't sound very romantic. Muggers crept up on you; so did old age.”

“After all, Sergios was not all bad. He was tough, ruthless, arrogant and selfish, but while he might have the morals of an alley cat, he had been remarkably kind to her mother.”

“I have heard stories that it was love at first sight for both of us, that we disappeared to a guest room at Merle's house, had our meals sent up, and didn't emerge for several days. This is absolutely untrue. I would never behave like that as a guest in someone's home. Carlos and I went to my beach house. ”

“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”

“One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.”

“My head aches, my eyes burn, my arms and legs have given up, and my face in the mirror has a grayish cast. The bed, across the room, calls in its unmistakable lover's croon, Come to me, come, only I can make you truly happy, oh, how happy I'll make you, don't resist, remember how you moan with pleasure the instant we touch.....”