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.

You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes." Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you." "No.

Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.

Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.

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

A lady must retain always her composure. Even in a rainstorm, she must appear joyous and dry. When she loses her composure, then the respect of her peers and her staff will follow in short order.

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.