She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.

Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enought to bury her alive.

It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in—her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.

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.

Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.

Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.