“Her (Beverly Powers) face was round and sweet, but her eyes were another matter. Whatever sport she’d played, this woman had been a ferocious competitor.I was profoundly glad I hadn’t been having an affair with her husband.”

“My gran had always told me that a woman--any woman worth her salt--could do whatever she had to.”

“The average woman would not be pondering how fast her date could kill her, but I’ll never be an average woman.”

“The queen is ... busy," Wybert said. "When she wants you in her room, the light, it will shine." He indicated a round light set in the wall to the right of the door.So I was stuck her for an indefinite time-until the light, it shone.”

“I had never realized a woman could have to struggle to keep her hands off a man, but here I was, digging my nails into my palms, staring at the inside of my eyelids as though I could maybe see through them if I peered hard enough.”

“Kennedy's issue didn't seem to be that she had been in jail, but that she had put on weight in jail. The food had been crappy, she'd told me, and it has been high on the carbohydrate count. "But I'm an emotional eater," she'd said, as if that were a terrible thing. "And I was real emotional in jail.”

“Oh. No wonder I'd been sick. I hadn't eaten anything since then. I'm a girl who likes her meals, so it hadn't been a weight-loss tactic. I'd just been too busy bumping from crisis to crisis. Go on the Sookie Stackhouse Narrow Avoidance of Death Diet! Run for your life, and miss meals, too! Exercise plus starvation.”