“Too bad,Elizabeth. You're Stuck with me.Not for a few decades,not for centuries. You're tied to me forever. That boy and girl offspring you talked off? They'll come from me--or no one.”

“His debtors always assumed he'd demand their firstborn. Like I'm fucking Rumpelstiltskin? What would Lothaire do with countless squalling babes? Raise them in a kennel?”

“Lothaire is very much alive.You swear?Often. Though not as much as foul-mouthed Regin. I try not to in front of Bertil. She petted the bat.I meantwill Lothaire live?He will.”

“He sat up, going still. Am I wearing a wife-beater, Lizvetta? He gaped down. Oh, come on!Lothaire”

“Tell me, Lothaire, I want to know. Convince me why I should love you.Because any other female would!”

“When she absently worried her bottom lip with one of her adorable little fangs, he s”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one”

“But why, why, why can't people just say what they mean?”

“Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end,...”

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds be...”

“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.”

“Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.”