“Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.”

“There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.”

“You forget I’m a goddess,” she hissed. “Your goddess.” And a bitch as well. But then, weren’t all goddesses afflicted with bitchery?”

“When you dance, sister, you feel in your heart the blessing of the Goddess, her peace, her kindness. But when you are with him, then the power of the Goddess is in your heart, crashing through you. The Goddess is no thing of stone. The Goddess is breath, desire, despair. She is the green of the brushing leaf, the baby's cry, the lovers bite, the fragrance of the rose. You feel the Goddess moving through you. ”

“You look like a goddess when you come, did you know that?""I'm not a goddess.""Not a goddess. Not an angel. Not a devil. Are you a ghost? Because you can't be real.""I'm real.”

“It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”