Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

I was too absorbed to be responsive

She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him.

i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires

It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.