“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.”

“Her voice is still pitched high, thanks to her youth, but it has a certain incipient darkness to it, a low richness that will mature in the coming years to the smoky tones of a priestess or a queen...”

“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.”

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

“As Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

“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...”

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

“If you don't learn to laugh at life it'll surely kill you, that I know.”

“Through all of living have much joy and laughter, life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.”