“This is no shy, just-between-friends kiss. This is a kiss unlike any that I've ever had. It's the kiss of a hundred thumping kick drums, a raging earthquake.”

“I wept when the muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded by tears I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss. All of you who have ever been kissed by the Muse will surely understand that Oskar, once branded by that kiss, was condemned to take back the drum he had rejected years before, the drum he had buried in the sand of Sapse Cemetery.”

“The kiss. The kiss. The kiss. It was chocolate cake and fizzy passion and goose bumps. No one had ever kissed me like that.”

“Kisses open doors, I've noticed. That one gesture can unlock secrets, ease open feelings. It can't be prevented--these kisses just are. It's how they work. They break into basements you never knew you had.”

“Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; then to that twenty, add a hundred more; a thousand to that hundred: so kiss on, to make that thousand up a million. treble that million, and when that is done, let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun!”

“... I have just experienced the most passionate kiss I've ever received from a guy, and it was on the freaking forehead!”