“She had never imagined she had the power to make someone else so happy. And not a magical power, either--a purely human one.”

“She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure.”

“Listening to Leonard, Madeleine felt impoverished by her happy childhood. She never wondered why she acted the way she did, or what effect her parents had had on her personality. Being fortunate had dulled her powers of observation.”

“If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done. ”

“I couldn't forget. I couldn't break. She had the power to break me. No one had ever been given that power, ever.”

“And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.”