“He refused categorically all ideas of fidelity or serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude tenderness and devotion - feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient.”

“--he could feel the outside world closing in on him, demanding his consideration, but as long as he stayed by himself in the woods he was able to remain true to his refusal. He came from a long line of refusers, he had the constitution for it. There seemed to be almost nothing left of Lalitha; she was breaking up on him the way dead songbirds did in the wild--they were impossibly light to begin with, and as soon as their little hearts stopped beating they were barely more than bits of fluff and hollow bone, easily scattered in the wind--but this only made him more determined to hold on to what little of her he still had.”

“he had never felt this type of heat and longing for another person. He didn't know how Zane did it, but Ty knew that there would never be anyone else for him. He wanted Zane to feel that too, to have that assurance both physically and emotionally. He would do whatever he had to make sure Zane knew he was his”

“She was so beautiful tonight he knew he would die of it. He hated that anyone else should see it. He wished it were something he alone could see. And he knew he was alone, that nobody saw it but him. And he knew that everyone could see it. And still no one could but him.”

“He demonstrated that there was no such thing as free will, since men's creative impulses were determined, as all else, by the economic structure of the epoch in which they lived.”

“He demanded I tell him all I knew. I refused. He threatened me. Still, I refused. He became irate. He screamed. He spat. He threw plates. Overturned tables. He punched his minister of culture.”