Intimacy is impossible without trust.

Men go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me.

have been reeling because I failed. Because I picked the wrong guy for me. Because I entered the wrong marriage. Because the truth is that at the age of thirty-five, I have yet to love someone enough to sacrifice for them. I’ve yet to open my heart enough to let someone in that much.

You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.

“Nobody deserves anything,” Evelyn says. “It’s simply a matter of who’s willing to go and take it for themselves. And you, Monique, are a person who has proven to be willing to go out there and take what you want. So be honest about that. No one is just a victim or a victor.

It doesn’t matter how gorgeous a woman is, to a man like Mick Riva, she’s always less attractive after he’s had sex with her. You know this.

You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.

People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth.

It was then that I knew that the only time anyone would know anything true about my life was when I told them directly. In a book.