“Mother, of course, takes a lot of exercise, walks and so on. And every morning she puts on a pair of black silk drawers and a sweater and makes indelicate gestures on the lawn. That's called Building the Body Beautiful. She's mad about it.”

“Why do you persist in being so frivolous, Urgit?""Why don't we just call it a symptom of my incipient madness?""You're not going to go mad," she said firmly."Of course I'm going to go mad, mother. I'm rather looking forward to it.”

“The most confident of women are those who believe in every scrap of fabric they wear. They are the ones who are as happy wih their drawers as they are with their gowns. You can tell the difference between a woman who wraps herself in beautiful silks and satins and she who wears...otherwise.”

“Mace watched his beautiful sister. She took after their mother. He took after his father. And they got along about as well as that pair did.”

“She looked long and lean and beautiful, and she was totally unaware of her looks as she called him. She had lived in a world of extraordinary-looking people for so long, and hers was a life of the mind rather than the beauty of face and body. She never thought about it, which somehow made her even more attractive.”

“But she went and fetched some marigolds from her own little garden, and put them in a vase on the chest of drawers, for she knew there was lots of room for love, even if there was not much for great-aunties.”