“I like your manly bravado," she said. "Do it some more.”

“You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.”

“Your Grace," she said, "I have only one question. Do you wish this man crippled, or dead?”

“It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”

“We got some that were plain and some cinnamon. I liked the cinnamon better. Violet said that it was important to start with the plain, so that the cinnamon seemed more like a change. She said she had a theory that everything was better if you delayed it. She had this whole thing about self-control, okay, and the importance of self-control.”

“Moscow was, as some said, the most beautiful mistress a man could ever want, but never cross her: like any good woman, she might just cut off your balls for the hell of it.”