“Her husband had archaic ideas about jewels; a man bought them for his wife in acknowledgement of things he could not gracefully utter.”
“He came to be very glad that he had known her, and that she had had a hand in breaking him in to life. He has known pretty women and clever ones since then,-- but never one like her, as she was in her best days. Her eyes, when they laughed for a moment into one`s own, seemed to promise a wild delight that he has not found in life. "I know where it is," they seemed to say, "I could show you!”
“Oh, but it is bleak!” she murmured. “Suppose we should have to stay here all next winter, too,… and the next! What will become of me, Niel?” There was fear, unmistakable fright in her voice. “You see there is nothing for me to do. I get no exercise. I don’t skate; we didn’t in California, and my ankles are weak. I’ve always danced in the winter, there’s plenty of dancing at Colorado Springs. You wouldn’t believe how I miss it. I shall dance till I’m eighty.… I’ll be the waltzing grandmother! It’s good for me, I need it.” They”
“I could feel his heart pump and his muscles strain," she said, "when he balanced himself and me on the rocks. I knew that if we fell, we’d go together; he would never drop me".”
“Niel felt tonight that the right man could still save her, even now. She was still her own indomitable self, going through her old part,--but only the stage hands were left to listen to her. All those who had shared in fine undertakings and bright occasions were gone.”
“. . . she had always the power of suggesting things much lovelier than herself, as the perfume of a single flower may call up the whole sweetness of spring.”
“Just what do you want?” Her answer had been, My very own Mr. Darcy. And hadn’t she wished for a “darkly handsome man, heroic, upstanding, and moral, with a heart filled to overflowing with love to her rescue and sweep her off her feet?” She nodded to herself. Yes, I did. And didn’t that fit Alysandir, right down to the rescue and sweeping her off her feet and into his arms? – Isobella Douglas”
“played any sort of game. Ten.”
“For most affairs, this eventually becomes the most fundamental of questions, the only one that matters: Do we love each other more than the lives we already have? It is the question that hovers in the background of every secret phone call, flavors every tryst with the head of possibilities of apocalypse and renewal; and it is the answer to that question, or the lack thereof, that so often dooms an affair to failure.”
“Psychologically, we’re all a complex mixture of hopes and fears. Each day we wake up with the scales tipping a bit one way or the other. If they go too far toward hopefulness, we can become naïve and unrealistic. If the scales tilt too far the other way, we can get consumed by paranoia and hatred.”
“He did not know what love was. And he did not know what good it was. But he knew he carried with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure. Rage would not cure it. Indulgence made it worse, flamed it, made it grow like cancer. And it had ruined his life. Not now, not in this moment. Long before. The world had seemed a good and liveable place. Brutal, yes. but there was a certain joy in that. The brutality on the football fields, in the tonks, was celebration. Men were maimed without malice, sometimes--often even--in friendship. Lonely, yes. Running was lonely. Sweat was lonely. The pain of preparation was lonely. There's no way to share a pulled hamstring with somebody else. There's no way to farm out part of a twisted knee. But who in god's name ever assumed otherwise? Once you know that it was all bearable”
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