“You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.”

“You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all.He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.”

“Apparently, all men were the same. It was like God had given them different faces just so that women would be able to tell them apart.”

“He had given Cosette a dress of Binche lace that had come down to him from his own grandmother. “These fashions have come round again,” he said, “old things are all the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood,”

“It was The Aeneid that had included the fascinating story of the Trojan Horse. Why anyone would accept a gift from a departing, defeated army had made no sense to her then and still did not. But, again, men had made the decision, probably drunk with their victory. Any woman would look at such a gift and wonder why it had been given, and then have someone quickly dispose of it.”

“I couldn't forget. I couldn't break. She had the power to break me. No one had ever been given that power, ever.”