“I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.”

“I was born when he kissed me, I died when he left me, I lived a few weeks while he loved me”

“Dixon Steele: You know, when you first walked into the police station, I said to myself, “There she is — the one that’s different. She’s not coy or cute or corny. She’s a good guy — I’m glad she’s on my side. She speaks her mind and she knows what she wants.”Laurel Gray: Thank you, sir. But let me add: I also know what I don’t want — and I don’t want to be rushed.”

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

“He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.”

“They were one unto the other, a circle whirling evenly, effortlessly, endlessly. He knew beauty and the intensity of a dream and he was meshed in a womb he called happiness. He did not think: This must come to an end in time. A circle had no beginning or end; it existed. He did not allow thought to enter the hours that he waited for her, laved in memory of her presence. He seldom left the apartment in those days. In the outside world there was time; in time, there was impatience. Better to remain within the dream.”

“Once he’d had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.”