“And even later, when for the first time in her life she had lain in bed with a man and said his name involuntarily or said it truly meaning him, the name she was screaming and saying was not his at all.”

“When she orgasmed, she said his name. Twice. And didn’t it make him glad that even though he had no voice, his ears worked just fine. –JM”

“In that case" Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face,"I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace.Will look at her, slow and hard, then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. "Then you must do the same for me," he said. "Tessa."She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing if for the first time-the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath. Her own breath was very short when he said, softly, "Will.""Yes?" Amusement glittered his eyes.With a sort of horror Tessa realized that she had simply said his name for the sake of saying it; she hadn't actually had a question.”

“He said when he went to sell a man a flue, he asked first about that man's wife's health and how his children were. He said he had a book that he kept the names of his customers' families and what was wrong with them. A man's wife had cancer, he put her name down in the book and wrote 'cancer' after it and inquired about her every time he went to that man's hardware store until she died; then he scratched out the word 'cancer' and wrote 'dead' there. "And I say thank God when they're dead," the salesman said; "that's one less to remember.”

“His name is Arnold. But you’re not on a first name basis with him, and that’s not his first name. So that’s Mr. Arnold to you. Once you get to know him, he may let you call him by his first name, which is Grafmiller. His middle name is his wife’s maiden name: Maiden. Their maid’s first name is Maiden, and her last name is America. Maiden America, though I think she was made in China.”

“... the surprised bookseller, whose name (inexplicably) was Mendelssohn. He was no relation to the German composer, and this Mendelssohn either overliked his last name or disliked his first so much that he never revealed it. (When Ted had once asked him his first name, Mendelssohn had said only: "Not Felix.")”