“And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.”

“This was it. This was what she had longed for throughout the lonely years of her girlhood.Suddenly she felt lonelier than she had ever felt.And so excited she could barely breathe,Tresham stepped up beside her, drew her arm through his again, set his free hand lightly over hers, and said not a word.She had never loved him more.”

“He knew he was alive when he was with her, whatever the devil that meant.Whatever the devil it did mean, it made all the difference.And he was not even sure what that meant.”

“Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?”

“Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?”

“...Miss Blanche Heyward, opera dancer, would have made a superlative drill sergeant if she had just been a man.”

“She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.”