“His own voice was older than he was. Ancient, unearthed from some mystical subterranean place...The voice seemed to make his whole body ache. Maybe it made him bleed inside. I wondered if it hurt, if it burned in his throat.”

“Yes, the Beast changed.He spoke more now, and did not gaze at Beauty in the same intense, almost pained way, as if he were feeling every emotion she felt. He did not sigh in his sleep when she sighed and his stomach didn't growl when hers hurt. He could not read her thoughts anymore, and she could not read his. He seemed a bit more clumsy and guarded and distant, too. They no longer ran through the woods together, although they still walked there sometimes. They quarreled and raised their voices to each other once in a while. Each time, after they quarreled, Beauty bathed, combed the tangles from her hair, and began to wear shoes again for a few days.”

“You’ll have to take me to some museums,” he said. He was being the young man on the road, following the sun because gray weather made him suicidal, writing his poetry in his mind in diners and gas station men’s rooms across the country.”

“He smells like night-blooming flowersCrushed, juicy petals on the pillowsHis voice is full of oceanHumming like the surfHe kneels before me like I am his goddessHe is a god”

“Maybe he was real. Maybe I'd made him up. Either way, he didn't think I needed him anymore. Maybe he was right.”

“She had changed him. The ice was in his eyes and in his heart, like he had predicted with that song, but now they were deep embedded there, all the pain of the world. Not pain to make you feel for somebody else but pain to make you stop feeling.”

“Weetzie could see him--it was a man, a little man in a turban, with a jewel in his nose, harem pants, and curly-toed slippers. "Lanky Lizards!" Weetzie exclaimed."Greetings," said the man in an odd voice, a rich, dark purr."Oh, shit!" Weetzie said."I beg your pardon? Is that your wish?”