“Stick them in the Blue Room. And no interruptions for the next couple of hours, please. My guest and I will be fucking. Two hours, Nora?”“At least,” she agreed.“Better make it three, Alfred.” Griffin shifted Nora higher on his shoulder and continued up the stairs.“This is going to be a long summer, isn’t it?” she asked.“Eight and a half inches long, if you’ll recall.”

“I dreamt I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live-I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room half an hour.”

“You’re impinging on my private space,” I said, inching backward.Patch gave a barely-there smile. "Impinging? This isn’t the SAT, Nora.”

“- I won't be able to think. I won't be able to work.- Nothing will interfere with your work like suicide.(Silence)- I dreamt that I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room for half an hour.(A long silence)- Okay, let's do it, let's do the drugs, let's do the chemical lobotomy, let's shut down the higher functions of my brain and perhaps I'll be a bit more fucking capable of living.Let's do it.”

“Tom. Tom, look at me. Has Nora agreed to marry you?""No, but she will because she has to.”

“She wanted a degree in business technology, not to be the next freaking Nora Roberts.”