“Armida smiles to hear, but keeps her gaze
fixed on herself, love's labours to behold.
Her locks she braided and their wanton ways
in lovely order marshalled and controlled.
She wound the curls of her fine strands with sprays
of flowers, like enamel worked on gold,
and made the stranger rose join with her pale
breast's native lily, and composed her veil.”

“To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever;
For Nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!”

“She clad herself in a russet gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare:
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay.
Dropped her head in the maiden's hand.
And followed her all the way.”

“I like her; I could watch her the rest of my life. She has breasts that smile.”

“She was tall and pleasantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.”

“I love the way she projects two facets: a visible persona and a subterranean one. She keeps her thoughts to herself; she seems to suggest that her secret, inner life is at least as significant as the appearance she gives.”

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”

“The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.”

“Our minds work alike, she thought. She had found her partner, her equal, the one to work and live and love with her. Her soulmate.”

“Her smile was all pride. I had seen many like her in the past. She believed herself cleverer than she was because it suited others to let her maintain that delusion.”