“The real aim of romance is to provide escape and entertainment.”

“My passionate puritan!”

“I get my heroes so that they're lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they've got to be rich and then I make it that they're only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they're well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it's dangerous to be alone in the room with.”

“When you need to lose control, to let go, to fall apart, I'll give you that. And I'll catch you afterwards. But if you need to be the one in charge, I'll give you that too.”

“Is life too short to be taking this shit, or is life too short to be minding it?”

“The same word passed through three minds, simultaneously, philosophical, fatalistic, the eternal refuge of the Italian: Pazienza....”

“He loved the interminable winter nights, when the dissatisfied wind mewed through the keyhole, and gusts of acrid smoke were driven down through the chimney; the imperfect silence when you awoke, as of a conversation hastily lulled, objects being hastily replaced. ‘Blow, blow thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.’ Why was it that he felt so perfectly attuned to winter, to its fatalistic expectation of the worst, then, when the worst came, its rustic heroisms and shouldering of burdens, improvised ingeniousness, constructive despair?”