“she wanted to dance with someone who would embrace her in the way she dreamed of since adolescence.”

“I would not let her work until she was eighteen, and believe me, since the time she was being strolled down the street in her stroller, people were saying, “Can I use her in my commercial? Can I put her in my movie?” “No!” But I did let her take any class that she wanted to take. Singing, acting, dancing…”

“Dance with her, and she will forgive much; dance well, and she will forgive anything.”

“She feels lonely all the time, she wants to be accepted, by anyone, on any terms, but she feels apart. As if nobody who really got to know her would trust her.”

“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.”

“She was our queen, our rose, our star;
And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing!”

“I was even a little glad that if it wasn’t going to be me she wanted, it was going to be someone who really deserved her.”

“A convention has to be something that more than one person is moved to take hold of. It's a convention to call your sweetheart "dumplin" or "honeybun." It would also be a convention to call her "gulag," if she would stand for it, which she won't, and why would you want to be around someone who would?”

“How she still thought of Max every day and it was like someone had emptied her lungs of air, and she would catch at her heart, afraid she was dying.”

“She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.”