Spring came late, but when it came it was hand-in-hand with summer, and almost at once everything was baking and warm, and in the villages the people danced every night on concrete dancing floors under the plane trees.

To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.

Do you always laugh when you make love?' said Fabrice. I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I do. I generally laugh when I'm happy and cry when I'm not. Do you find it odd?

Nothing makes people crosser than being considered too old for love.

The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married.

Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.

Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child. Black Beauty now ... !