“When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang.”

“Out of the woman's great brown breast the milk gushed forth for the child, milk as white as snow, and when the child suckled at the one breast it flowed like a fountain from the other, ans she let it flow. There was more than enough for the child, greedy though he was, life enough for many children, and she let it flow out carelessly, conscious of her abundance. There was always more. Sometimes she lifted her breast and let it flow out upon the ground to save her clothing, and it sank into the earth and made a soft, dark, rich spot in the field. The child fat and good-natured and ate of the inexhaustible life his mother gave him.”

“Carmen stood at the altar wearing a hand-beaded, curve hugging, ivory silk and chiffon gown that fit so perfectly, it looked as if it had been sewn on her. The fact that one of the breasts beneath the silken fabric was not her flesh but a form made of gel didn't detract from the gorgeousness of Carmen the slightest bit.”

“It was right then, between when I asked about the labyrinth and when she answered me, that I realized the importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls' bodies ease from one place to another, from arc to the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip to wait to breast to neck to ski-slope nose to forehead to shoulder to the concave arch of the back to the butt to the etc. I'd noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance.”

“That becomes clear if you try to define the objects and things which supervene in each class. Odd and even, straight and curved, number, line, and shape can be defined without change but flesh, bone, and man cannot. They are like sbub nose, not like curved.”

“…how when you love someone, you take that person into your body, your fingertips predicting their angles and curves; how you smell like them in the morning.”