The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color - oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples.

She had had no idea what it would do to her seeing him in a suit.

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer. Everything fades: the shimmer of gold over White Cove; the laughter in the night air; the lavender early morning light on the faces of skyscrapers, which had suddenly become so heroically tall. Every dawn seemed to promise fresh miracles, among other joys that are in short supply these days. And so I will try to tell you, while I still remember, how it was then, before everything changed-that final season of the era that roared.

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.

The world is such a marvel - it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.

Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.

There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.