I have six illegitimate children," Villiers informed her, not kindly. She visibly paled. :My daughter is marrying a duke," the duchess said between clenched teeth. "True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that's my cross to bear.

We all think we have time, you know. It's this miracle substance and there seems to be so much of it, and then all of a sudden, it's gone.

It’s better to live like a flame, to know a man and love him even if he can’t be yours, then never to love at all.

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.

I woke up this morning,” Gabriel said, “thinking of nothing more than rolling over and pulling you into my arms and kissing you again. Kissing: only kissing. As if I were a green boy of fourteen. In case you don’t realize it, Kate, kissing is not a man’s usual inclination in the morning.

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

A stale mind is the devil's breadbox.