The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then: "Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up!

She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose].

And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.

It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.

Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls.

Just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't do it.

She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good.