“As if the night had said to me, You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.”

“A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in a const...”

“It seems an insult to the night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming full of blessed design tranquility. All things follow their course.”

“It was as if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world...on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves.”

“What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none.”

“If you really want peace in any world you have to learn to say nothing.”

“In his refusal to believe in anything supernatural or inherently evil, he was as unrealistic as an old voodoo queen who sees spirits everywhere.”

“Lasher, she said, for the wind which you send that lashes the grasslands, for the wind that lashes the leaves from the trees.”

“And oh, how she pitched herself into things. She would draw pictures all day long for weeks on end, then throw out the pencils and never draw another thing. Then it was embroidery with her, she had...”

“I knew the woodsy fragrance that accompanied Reed was his natural scent. It was one of the many things that made him hard to resist.”

“My whole world started to tilt. I could feel it, sliding ever so slightly off center.”