“She was pretty all right, but he'd had prettier. She was proud and brave,too, but she was also outrageous and outspoken. And, yes, she had the body of a goddess, but she dressed it like a man. She entranced him, she irritated the hell out of him. She was forbidden fruit!”

“And what a lovely body the young girl possessed! She was obviously proud of it herself & never seemed ashamed to display it. Iris Leong then decided that if she had a body like Phyllis`, she, too, would be proud to display it in all its glory.All the cards now appeared to be stacked in the girl`s favour. She enjoyed orgasms all day long & yet never had to fear about losing her virginity. She thus had her cake & also ate it. She should be a model to all young girls, Iris decided.[MMT]”

“In the silence, she felt the past and the present shift and mix, but that was a mirage. There was no way to comfort the lost boy he'd been back then. But she had the grown male.She had him right in her arms, and for a brief moment of whimsy, she imagined that she was never, ever going to let him go.”

“She wanted him to see all of her and also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded by the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy.”

“now that she realized she had been waiting for him—she did not like that.”

“The tent in which she first met him had smelled of blood, of the death she did not understand, and still she had thought of it all as a game. She had promised him the world. His flesh in the flesh of his enemies. And much too late had she realized what he had sown in her. Love. Worst of all poisons.”