Dogs do tricks. Cats play tricks.

She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.

Sometimes I spend all day in my dressing gown. But if I do dress, I make myself ravishing because then, I feel ravishing.

Yes, it's quite amazing how I continue to shock my mother even after all these years together

The books weren't exactly Linnet's general reading fare, but a desperate woman will read anything.

Where did you go to school?” Piers inquired. “Your all together too literate for a butler. Most bulters I know say things like as you wish, my lord, and leave it at that. Our conversations should be along these lines: Prufrock, bring me a wench and then you would say, as you wish.

I never did learn how to live in the moment, but I did learn that moments could be wasted and the world would continue to spin on its axis.