“She threw herself across her bed, weeping into a pillow. She knew just what she wanted -- the desire was a fierce ache inside her. But fiercer still was the knowledge that it was beyond the reach o...”

“Nafsha is so concerned with my virginity. I am beginning to think she would wed me herself. Alas, the only tool she might use to make me a woman is her tongue -- and it is far too sharp for me to a...”

“In the dull, persistent beat of her heart, she hears the rhythm of hope. It is faint and thin as a thread, but it is there.”

“Men always laugh whenever a woman says she has political skill. But it's not such a difficult thing to master.”

“She will not bow her head to any woman or man, so why, indeed, should she bow to a needle?”

“Still, if I don't believe in the possibility, I might go mad from fear.”

“Men's freedom is their unfaithfulness: the Son of Heaven or the son of a peasant, they could both reduce me to the mediocre torments of a woman.”

“Once upon a time there was an empress, trapped as a ghost in the ruins of a jewelled palace, cursed to find another soul to take her place. At least, that's what the empress heard. But, as it turne...”

“If a tree is bent, every goat will jump on it.”

“I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes.”

“The world has enough women who know how to be smart. It needs women who are willing to be simple. The world has enough women who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The world...”

“The heart of a woman is the best mirror you can find.”

“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...”