"She would have stood by Giles’s side, and shaken hands with people, a smile on her face. I could not do that. I had not the pride, I had not the guts. I was badly bred."

"And he went on eating his marmalade as though everything were natural."

"She had contemplated life so long it had become indifferent to her."

"Maxim's voice, clear and strong, "Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint."

"As I stood there,hushed and still,I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before."

"But the point is this Monsieur...the reason why Madame complains of you is not because of the immorality in itself; but because, so she tells me, you make immorality delicious."

"She's dearer than life itself, that's all I know."

"He was young and ardent in a hundred happy ways."

"And, though there should be a world of difference between the smile of a man and the bared fangs of a wolf, with Joss Merlyn they were one and the same."

"It's funny,' I noted in the diary, 'how often I seem to build a story around one sentence, nearly always the last one, too. The themes are a bit depressing but I just can't get rid of that."

"People who travel are always fugitives."

"There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair"

"You have blotted out the past for me, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo."

"I would not be young again, if you offered me the world. But then I'm prejudiced.' 'You talk,' I said, 'as if you were ninety-nine.' 'For a woman I very nearly am,' she said. 'I'm thirty five."

"You had to endure something yourself before it touched you."

"How pleasant,' Dona said, peeling her fruit; 'the rest of us can only run away from time to time, and however much we pretend to be free, we know it is only for a little while - our hands and our feet are tied."

"If there’s one thing that makes a man sick, it’s to have his ale poured out of an ugly hand."

"…you guessed that somewhere, in heaven knew what country and what guise, there was someone who was part of your body and your brain, and that without him you were lost, a straw blown by the wind."

"So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot."

"There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance."

"People come into your lives who you have a good time with, and time goes by and you still have a good time with them and you do stupid stuff with them. To me, that's life."

"I am self-centred. I just adore myself."

"I love women. I mean, I'm married, but I used to get in all kinds of trouble."

"It's a first for me. It's my first nude scene."