…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus. - John Irving

Dan suggested to Owen and me that we were better off to not involve ourselves with Hester. How true! But how we wanted to be involved in the thrilling real-life sleaziness that we suspected Hester was in the thick-of. We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

Most men don't mind if another woman watches. It's the women who are watching who don't want to be seen.