Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it’s all in the timing.I sell men back their worse suspicions:that everything’s for sale,

...He was wrong about the sadness though: far better to have it when you're young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone.

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

I eat in pink restaurants, which are better for the skin. Yellow ones turn you yellow. I actually spend time thinking about this. Vanity is becoming a nuisance; I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I’m not ready for that yet.

...and the evening was so beautiful, that it made a pain in my heart, as when you cannot tell wether you are happy or sad; and I thought that if I could have a wish, it would be that nothing would ever change, and we would stay that way forever.

The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, a simplicity; to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify.

Gavin has tried quoting Yeats to the effect that women must labour to be beautiful, but Reynolds--who used to be a passionate Yeats fan--is now of the opinion that Yeats is entitled to his point of view, but that was then and social attitudes were different then, and in actual fact Yeats is dead.