“Dennis had just kissed her once, and she was screaming for a hamburger.”

“Dennis had imagined that he and Beth would be one of those couples who never quarreled, that when they weren't kissing they would be laughing or lying in each other's arms, serenely, deliriously happy. He could never have imagined that she would make him so crazy angry he would scream at her in front of their friends. But in that instant, he learned a little about love.”

“As a little girl she had liked looking at her palms against the light, the red peeking through her closed fingers. Once she had shown it to her father and he had kissed her fingertips, pretending to eat them.”

“Silence reigned. Well, except for Mallory's thundering heartbeat. She was in an attic loft, flat beneath her Mr. Wrong. Her common sense was screaming flee! But her secret inner bad girl was screaming oh please can't we have him? Just once?-Mallory”

“He tried to kiss me. One of the few things that had impressed me in college was a Southern girl’s account o how she avoided being kissed on the doorstep of her house once by wearing a flower in her hair and sticking it in her mouth when she said good night. Only I had no flower.”

“And the prince who had once been a bear pulled close the girl who had once had no name, and kissed her.”