“He and his brothers were heroes at heart - even if they were all bad boy on the outside”

“What do you think I should do with a naked trespasser, darlin'?""Well, cowboy, I'm thinking you should march on back to that pickup of yours and drive straight to hell.”

“For a moment David was tempted to think that perhaps there were no good people at all outside concentration camps, but then he reminded himself of the sailor and Angelo and the English people who might have been ignorant but were certainly not bad.”

“Late twenties, single, female. Do the math.Flirty flings were fabulous until you hit the big three-O, all downhillfrom there. Biological clocks started ticking like time bombs waiting todetonate, gravity exerted more force on your life than your mom, andsuddenly, the dog-ugliest creep looked like Jake Gyllenhaal.”

“So far, in the room itself there had not been a sound. When the clock had struck ten, as it seemed to me, years ago, there came a rustling noise, from the direction of the bed. Feet stepped upon the floor,— moving towards where I was lying. It was, of course, now broad day, and I, presently, perceived that a figure, clad in some queer coloured garment, was standing at my side, looking down at me. It stooped, then knelt. My only covering was unceremoniously thrown from off me, so that I lay there in my nakedness. Fingers prodded me then and there, as if I had been some beast ready for the butcher’s stall. A face looked into mine, and, in front of me, were those dreadful eyes. Then, whether I was dead or living, I said to myself that this could be nothing human,— nothing fashioned in God’s image could wear such a shape as that. Fingers were pressed into my cheeks, they were thrust into my mouth, they touched my staring eyes, shut my eyelids, then opened them again, and— horror of horrors!— the blubber lips were pressed to mine— the soul of something evil entered into me in the guise of a kiss.”

“That the man in the bed was the one whom, to my cost, I had suffered myself to stumble on the night before, there could, of course, not be the faintest doubt. And yet, directly I saw him, I recognised that some astonishing alteration had taken place in his appearance. To begin with, he seemed younger,— the decrepitude of age had given place to something very like the fire of youth. His features had undergone some subtle change. His nose, for instance, was not by any means so grotesque; its beak-like quality was less conspicuous. The most part of his wrinkles had disappeared, as if by magic. And, though his skin was still as yellow as saffron, his contours had rounded,— he had even come into possession of a modest allowance of chin. But the most astounding novelty was that about the face there was something which was essentially feminine; so feminine, indeed, that I wondered if I could by any possibility have blundered, and mistaken a woman for a man; some ghoulish example of her sex, who had so yielded to her depraved instincts as to have become nothing but a ghastly reminiscence of womanhood.”

“He saw the face of his brother on Thanksgiving night, saw Jim's sad weary eyes, and his heart broke, as if his brother were more important than God himself, or God himself was speaking through Jim as he might speak through anyone put in our inevitable or accidental path, anyone who threatened to call us back to ourselves, who looked at us with eyes that reflected a heart as broken as our own, as fragile, as disappointed.”