Anna Godbersen

“Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.”

“Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.”

“That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams.The girls of 1929.”

“Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.”

“I tell you Schoonmaker she doesn't know what she has. That's the heart of it. She's like some wild creature who hasn't a clue the worth of its coat.”

“The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color -- oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples...”

“Her heart the damned thing had begun to race and she only hoped that the rapid inflation and deflation of her chest wasn't visible beneath her fitted bodice.”

“He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.”

“She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.”

“She was a vision in a white gown her dark hair forming a hazy halo around her rosy heart-shaped face. Her long lashes fluttered to touch her cheeks and then her eyes opened fully in his direction. Her small round mouth flexed in an immediate and knowing smile. That's the girl I'm going to marry Henry thought.”

“She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.”

“It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.”

“They will stop calling brides beautiful after today—you have simply set the standard too high,' he said.”

“She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.”

“Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.”

“She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.”

“A man is made in the rough-and-tumble of the world a lady emerges from the flossy back rooms of her own imagination.”

“Don't go looking for boys in the darkThey will say pretty things thenleave you with scars.Do go looking for boys in the parkFor that is where the true gentlemen are.”

“Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.”

“A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.”