The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.

I'm a cynical idealist.

I am a woman and my business is to hold things together. My business is to tear them apart.

There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good.

Baltimore is warm but pleasant... I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite.

I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me.

Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.