“It was just one of the many absurdities she discovered being married to Alexander Cameron: having everything she had ever wanted yet having nothing at all.”

“Poppy had known for years that she was going to marry him. It was one of her two great ambitions, the other being to see the world. She just hadn't gotten around to informing James yet.”

“Lucy seemed to be imprisoned by a legion of people in her life who always wanted what was right for her. And as a result, in the eyes of everyone, she had everything... and yet she always, always felt she had nothing. No one.”

“When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are.”

“That she held herself well was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well, considering that she spent little. But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch picture), this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing - nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway, not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.”

“Jessica planned on having her very last Craigslist date the following night. "I just want to find a guy worth keeping in touch with," she said. I thought about that. In fact, I thought about everything she'd written me. Everything so many had written me. All the talk of orgasms and lovers. Having many of one and unable to have even one of the other. Especially when it came to lovers -- the inability in both men and women to find that one person, that one partner, who totally "gets" you. No matter what anyone said, they 'all' seemed to want that.”