“After all, you couldn't expect any man to turn away from a beautiful woman with her ass in the air.”

“Ramming it up the middle only works if you soften the defenses up a little first," the coach said.”

“This man was different from all others; he was forbidden fruit, the outsider. Her mother had trained her well, but she had never told her what to do if a man set her heart to throbbing like the hooves of a runaway horse.”

“Commitment and family were important decisions, but so were matters of the heart. [Monique] might not know much about politics, but she knew she couldn’t command her heart to love. And she’d never be pressured into giving herself to Eero, not to appease her family or to strengthen her brother’s political position. She’d seen all she cared to of him and his power in the short week that he pursued her and that night he’d tried to bind their powers without her consent.”

“Do what you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be and don't if you don't want to be. Just be natural and light-hearted and pretty and simple and overflowing and general and baroque and bare and austere and stylized and wild and daring and conservative, and learn and learn and learn. Open your mind to every form of beauty.”

“White angel wings, made up from thousands of short feathers, now surrounded him."Uh. Bird?" She pointed dumbly, unable to form a single coherent though more."Harpie." He gave her a glare that could have killed.”

“Tony flung himself into his brother's arms and felt them close round him tight. "Hold me so I can't get away!" he said, and found himself queerly rejoicing in the steely strength of those scarred wrists.”