“The real substance is at the bottom of the sea. That’s where the mystery unfolds. The deepest part of your heart is like the deepest part of the ocean, and when someone is brave enough to go there, it’s worth sharing the treasures buried deeply within.”

“I took her to bed with silk and song’Lay still, my love, I won’t be long,I must prepare my body for passion.”O, your body you give, but all else you ration…”

“Has she glanced you way yet?”Twice,” Nick said on a note of satisfaction.Meaning?”Nick glanced at him. “She’s not completely disinterested.”I see Moreland. That makes it an even half dozen hanging out for a rich wife. Four looking for their second. Rossman, the old satyr, certainly isn’t likely to be much competition. What in the hell does he think he’s doing anyway? He must be sixty.”Basking, I should think. She hasn’t given him the cold shoulder yet,” Nick responded coolly.”

“Curse him for being all tight muscle, with ivory skin and a mouth as soft as rose petals. Curse him for having hair as fair as the sun, and eyes as black as night. Curse him for having the grace of a cat and deft, cool hands. And now I am having the same argument on paper that I have in my own head on too many nights. I know my choice is sensible, but it isn’t my common sense I think with, those times Rosto’s stolen a kiss from me.”

“God will bring the right person into your life at the right time. Always believe that! If they are not there, God isn’t finished yet!”

“Six months into our correspondence, he asked me to send him a picture. Eight months in his postcard read, ‘The very first moment I beheld you, my heart was irrevocably gone.’ ​It wasn’t until just a few years ago that Shari informed me this was actually a phrase he stole from Jane Austen’s Love and Friendship. I think the fact that he quoted Jane Austen may have made me fall a little bit more in love with him—even all these years later.”