“You turn dark shadows into canopies of hope and dry grass into gold.My heart is spoiled and my breath consumed when the beauty of earthgives a glimmer of understanding to the beauty of You.”

“You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a see of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses as rainbows.”

“Princess,” he whispered against her ear. “My beautiful, beautiful princess. I want to spoil you. Pamper you. Indulge you.”

“...because when beauty awes you, you must halt and try to catch your breath and your staggered heart.”

“She closed her eyes, dark-lidded, dark shadows beneath them; she really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses than tore at my very heart.”

“real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness to understand it.”