"There was one condolence letter that made me laugh. Naturally, a lot of them made me cry. Some of those, oddly enough, were from people who had never met Alice. They had become familiar with her as a character in books and articles I had written—light books and magazine pieces about traveling or eating or family life." Chapter 1, pg. 4

"When I saw Alice at that Monocle party, she was wearing a hat. At least, I've always remembered her as wearing a hat. She later insisted she never owned a hat of the sort I described." Chapter 2, pg. 12

"She was, as Roger Wilkins later wrote, so very pretty, but that wasn't the first thing that struck me about her; it might have come as much as two or three seconds later. My first impression was that she looked more alive than anyone I'd ever seen. She seemed...