Then Comes Seduction

'Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?'

'But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?'

'He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its  derivatives from the English Language - happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more... well, pleasant.'

'Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?'

'Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes? Because peace had been without thought? Without...integrity?
How could she have felt like that without love?
Was love essential?
Did it even exist - the love she had dreamed of her life?
If it did, it was too late now for her to find it.
Must she make do with this instead, then?
Only this?
Pleasure without love?'

'Love did not have to make sense. It did not have to be worthy. It did not have to be earned. It did not have to woo.
It just simply was.'

'I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.'

'This has been a birthday best forgotten.'
'Most birthdays are, milord,' his man said agreeably