“I hated the quiet. I could hear my fears that much louder for it.”

“I seemed to still be alive. Which was unexpected. I'd feel good about it when I stopped retching my insides up.”

“It was a bad idea to play chicken with someone who'd known you your whole life. Nobody came out a winner.”

“I called the desert into a storm.”

“I put a knife in your hand and your first instinct was to stab me.""You tried to stab me first," I objected without thinking.”

“I barged through the palace, dripping a trail of blood behind me as I held the dead bird by the neck.”

“The symbol of Goddess gives us permission. She teaches us to embrace the holiness of every natural, ordinary, sensual dying moment. Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee earth with its constan...”

“... the effort to discover an authentic self, to strip away layers of alienation and culturally imposed identity and find a soul in a clear, unimpeded communion with the sacred is consonant with sp...”

“I'm a queen with or without a king. Chasing anything is beneath me. Until you're ready to put away childish things and be my man, my king, someone I can trust to shepard my soul to the Almighty I h...”

“Stick-thin, alabaster-pale Etienne LeBlanc runs down the rue de Dinan with Madame Ruelle, the bakers wife, on his heels: the least-robust rescue ever assembled.”

“In river rescues, members of the Kansas City Fire Department rescue squad yell profanity-laced threats at victims before they get to them. If they don't, the victim will grab on to them and push th...”

“When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.”