“What modern art required was an imagination drawn to possibilities, rather than braced by smug presumptions.”

“For a woman's words to wound would require a man to listen first!”

“You are...beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all.”

“With so many willing, complex women in the world, he had little respect for men who fixated on girlishness. Innocence was, by definition, an absence of experience—character—knowledge. To desire that absence seemed rather deviant.”

“He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.”

“She had always loved him, after all. And perhaps he knew it. Perhaps he saw more than she had suspected. And despite it, he did not look away.”

“For what is love but a great rebellion against caution and sense?”