“The Imperial Concubine was fully aware of her own beauty, and she tended to be attracted by any force, such as religion, that treated her beauty and her high rank as things of no value.”

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”

“The blossoms seem unusually lovely this year. There were none of the scarlet-and-white-striped curtains that are set up among the blossoming trees so invariably that one has to come to think of the...”

“Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.”

“Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid ...”

“And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world.”

“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the ri...”

“We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We dont know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and fee...”

“Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if were honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devot...”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”

“Let me feel how thy pulses beat.”

“Jesus Christ! A man could only take so much. She yelped as he snatched her up around the waist and sat her on the counter. Sit there and dont move. Dont bat your eyes. Dont lick your lips. Dont get...”

“It was a superstition among them that a lover who smoked would always return, even from France. A man's sexual capacity might be injured by smoking, but they would always prefer a faithful to a pot...”