“Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I’ll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.”

“The sea up close is enormous. I squeezed my eyes against it for a moment, which is ridiculous, like fighting a giant with a pin. It comes to you anyway, through your ears and nose and skin and tongue. It is a savage, muscular thing, a vast dim wetness battering at the land and the air and all your senses.”

“I turned my peeled-apple face to him. I'd make myself look at him. I owed him that. His touch lingered on my neck as though he'd left a handprint of melted light.”

“I hope you don’t mind my joining you,” said Leanne. I minded. After all, she’d tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn’t.”

“You mind your tongue!” “Oh, I do,” I said. “I sharpen it every evening on your name.”

“This is the difference between Eldric and me. Had it been my job to transform the garden, I would have removed the clothesline. Clotheslines always make me think of undergarments, and although I’ve never been to Japan, I don’t imagine a memory-whiff of undergarments is at all À la Japonaise.”

“It never ends, this business of being a lady.”