“Cortez looked like someone newly in love, the way only twenty-four-year-olds can look.”

“They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.”

“I'm twenty years old and look at me-- there isn't a thing I want to do”

“Brennan didn’t look exactly like Raif to Shayla’s eyes, but for someone who didn’t know either man particularly well, they probably looked like twins, separated at birth by twenty or so years.”

“Wow. You look…really nice today. Did you do something different?” Only a thirty-four-year-old virgin, I thought.”

“Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.”