Michael Callahan

Love had to be deeper than that, than a glance over tea, which was indicative but not dispositive.

Remember: There's a reason the fairy godmother gave Cinderella two glass slippers.

They'd lived their lives on tightropes, never knowing where the next paycheck was coming from or if one was coming at all, their personal lives a mishmash of backstage affairs and dressing room brawls endured for the brief heady adrenaline rush brought by the orchestra's overture and glare of white lights.

...she would have walked all the way up to East Sixty-Third Street, and probably 163rd Street, if it meant pouring even more into this memory that wasn't a memory.

He was right: not about her playing him, or about her laughing at him, but certainly about her carelessness, about her casual disregard for how he would feel if he found out, and about the stunning lack of depth it exposed in her character.

That's what novels are: They're amalgams of archetypes, collections of random traits one observes in other people through life, blended into fresh characters.