“When a woman once asked Joe how he could come from such a magnificent home and such a good family and still become a gangster, Joe's answer was two-pronged: (a) he wasn't a gangster, he was an outlaw; (b) he came from a magnificent house not a magnificent home.”

“He wasn't evil as much as magnificently innocent of any kind of morality.”

“Desari reached up to trace his lips. ‘You have a perfect mouth, Julian. An amazingly perfect mouth.’He arched an eyebrow at her. ‘Just my mouth is amazing?’‘You are such a man.’ Her eyes laughed at him. ‘You need constant reassurance that you are magnificent.’He nodded. ‘Magnificent. I like that. I could live with magnificent. Good choice of words, lifemate.”

“He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.”

“Men wouldn't ask any such thing. They'd already know what caught my eye. He whispered in a conspiratorial fashion. "It's your tits." "They're magnificent." He wasn't even looking at them, but Minnie's hand itched to cover herself - not to block out his sight, but to explore her own curves. To see if, perhaps, her bosom was magnificent, if it had been magnificent all these years, and she had simply never noticed.”

“He was seething, drunk on his own magnificence”