“I am speechless: what can I answer?I put hand on my mouth.I have said too much already;now I will speak no more.”

“I already gave you my ass. I guess you can have my hand too.”

“That's the gap," I said . Then I held out my hand and reached across.Ellie reached back, wrapping her slender fingers around mine. "So are you disappointed that I'm not the perfect girl you thought I was?""No. I like you much better now - bed-head and all.”

“. . . wishes are like magnifying glasses they enlarge and focus an intention that is already inside us.”

“But, Ashley, what are you afraid of?''Oh, nameless things. Things which sound very silly when they areput into words. Mostly of having life suddenly become too real, ofbeing brought into personal, too personal, contact with some of thesimple facts of life. It isn't that I mind splitting logs here inthe mud, but I do mind what it stands for. I do mind, very much,the loss of the beauty of the old life I loved. Scarlett, beforethe war, life was beautiful. There was a glamor to it, aperfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecianart. Maybe it wasn't so to everyone. I know that now. But to me,living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. Ibelonged in that life. I was a part of it. And now it is gone andI am out of place in this new life, and I am afraid. Now, I knowthat in the old days it was a shadow show I watched. I avoidedeverything which was not shadowy, people and situations which weretoo real, too vital. I resented their intrusion.”

“Well, Hae-Joo probed, what did I do to relax? I play Go against my sony, I said."To relax?" he responded, incredulous. "Who wins, you or the sony?"The sony, I answered, or how would I ever improve?So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?I said, If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.”

“A modern princess—of England, say, or Monaco— serves the purpose of being an adornment in the fantasy life of the public. Consequently, she receives the kind of education that one might think of giving to a particularly splendid papier-mâché angel before putting it at the top of the Christmas tree: an education whose main goal is proficiency in the arts of looking pretty and standing straight. Our century, whatever virtues it may have, is not an optimal time for princesses.Things were different in the Renaissance. Intelligence had a primary value then. At almost every level of the social order, education was meant to create true amateurs—people who were in love with quality. A gentleman or lady needed to be at least minimally skilled in many arts, because that was considered the fittest way of appreciating the good things in life and honoring the goodness itself. Nor did being well-rounded mean smoothing over your finest points and becoming like the reflection of a smile in a polished teaspoon. Intelligence walked hand in hand with individuality, although having finely sharpened points of view did not, it was felt, require you to poke other people with them. If wit was a rapier, courtesy was the button at the end of the blade.”