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The office is a romantic enabler because you're always around the person you have a crush on. There's no escape from, and maybe no desire to escape from, those pressure-cooker conditions. And there's an automatic series of things you have to talk about all the time.

One of the reasons people like romances is that they're artificially shaped to give a pattern and meaning. It's not as messy as everyday life or as difficult or thorny.

Romance is a bird that will not sing in every bush, and love-affairs, however devoted the sentiments that inspire them, are often so business-like in the prudence with which they are conducted, that romance is reduced to a mere croaking or a disgusted silence.

Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.

I think romance is anything honest. As long as it's honest, it's so disarming.

Romances I ne'er read like those I have seen.

I have no objection to well-written romance, but I'd read enough of it to know that that's not what I had written. I also knew that if it was sold as romance I'd never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other literarily respectable newspaper - which is basically true, although the 'Washington Post' did get round to me eventually.

Women love romance, but they're not as romantic as men.

I'm not real good at romance.