“Maybe the snow would cool his ardor down to the point where he could look at Sterling without wanting him to the point of compromising his pinciples, but he wasn't holding out much hope of that. Snow was only frozen water, after all, and it couldn't work miracles.”

“Shane: "You've got to be feeling like hitting someone, and you know I like it. Smack me around. Fuck me. Get it out of your system."Ben: "You think that's what we do? Just that?"No, Shane wanted to say. You break me apart and put me back together right, so everything fits; everything’s smooth. You put your hands on me , and you hurt me, but you do it so fucking carefully. Trust you. Love you. Need you.”

“I need to devour you."Those words manage to knock the air right back out of my lungs, and my head spinsas one of his hands skims around my body. He splays it across the small of my back, pulling me closer to him, and leaning over until his lips are a centimeter from my collarbone."Sienna?" he growls, and I murmur to acknowledge him. "I'm going to taste you."He wasn't asking me, he was flat out telling me what was going to happen between us, and yet I felt myself nod, felt my body mold against his the moment his warm lips sought out the center of my throat."You smell like apples." he wispers harshly before his tongue darts out to trace the column of my thorat. I moan, letting my head fall all the way back."And you taste like the best kind of sin.”

“He was a big, rather clumsy man, with a substantial bay window that started in the middle of the chest. I should guess that he was less muscular than at first sight he looked. He had large staring blue eyes and a damp and pendulous lower lip. He didn't look in the least like an intellectual. Creative people of his abundant kind never do, of course, but all the talk of Rutherford looking like a farmer was unperceptive nonsense. His was really the kind of face and physique that often goes with great weight of character and gifts. It could easily have been the soma of a great writer. As he talked to his companions in the streets, his voice was three times as loud as any of theirs, and his accent was bizarre…. It was part of his nature that, stupendous as his work was, he should consider it 10 per cent more so. It was also part of his nature that, quite without acting, he should behave constantly as though he were 10 per cent larger than life. Worldly success? He loved every minute of it: flattery, titles, the company of the high official world...But there was that mysterious diffidence behind it all. He hated the faintest suspicion of being patronized, even when he was a world figure.Archbishop Lang was once tactless enough to suggest that he supposed a famous scientist had no time for reading. Rutherford immediately felt that he was being regarded as an ignorant roughneck. He produced a formidable list of his last month’s reading. Then, half innocently, half malevolently: "And what do you manage to read, your Grice?"I am afraid", said the Archbishop, somewhat out of his depth, "that a man in my position doesn't really have the leisure..."Ah yes, your Grice," said Rutherford in triumph, "it must be a dog's life! It must be a dog's life!”

“When my mum died I realized that it's possible to live without someone you love." When I asked him what he meant, he wrapped me back in his arms. "I love you, Willow, but I can live without you. I just refuse to.”

“Do the things that you always wanted to, without me there to hold you back, don't think just do, more than anything I want to see you go, take a glorious bite out of the whole world”

“You have to tell him ‘go toodles, Bits, go toodles for momma,’” I said, pitching my voice high in imitation, “or else he won’t go.” Blane looked at me. “I’m not doing that,” he said flatly. “But then he’ll go on the bed,” I protested. “How about I just point my gun at him,” he deadpanned.”