It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.

I didn't move. I've learned from years of experience that dogs and falcons and ladies come back to you if you stay where you are.

Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.

We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.

I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.