Life was a short window and there was no sense in doing the wrong thing over and over even if it was so difficult to stop.

We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects. These may be messages from God or tricks of the eye, but in neither case are we permitted to ignore them.

Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.

That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams. The girls of 1929.

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.

She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.