“She was an exotic flower amongst the snowdrifts, out of place, a Technicolor misfit in a monochrome Christmas movie.”

“His kisses were so hungry and male, which isn't bad. Every kiss said he could never have enough, but he wasn't going to stop trying. They were so hormonal. I wanted his sugar roughness. Girl's kiss...”

“Her lips are like pillows of warm glass. It is strange to find her resistant for even a second, since she has been the kisser and not the kissed. It wasn't like the last time, which felt fumbling a...”

“Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live fore...”

“Time owed an alliance to the undying.”

“Whatever problems we encountered, we put there. If we trace the line back, every struggle derived from some decision we made. It is not chance, it is how we teach ourselves.”

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.”

“You will fall to ruin because you believe that exceptions to the rule make new rules. That an evil man can shed the trappings of wickedness because you want him to. Men do not Change... Learn the l...”

“Reputation never has very much to do with reality. I could name half a dozen paragons of virtue that are horrible, small-souled, evil people. And some of the best men I know, you'd walk out of the ...”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”