“The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness.”

“She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.”

“The New or Future Eve is emptied of all inner life and turned into a shell. The bitter irony in this is that her perfection recalls nothing so much as a corpse.”

“But cockteasing is also a metaphor: she is someone who will manipulate your inner self while holding hers back from you.”

“She was not undamaged, however, and she knew it. No food or drink had passed her lips, but she had drunk deep of the Truth, and now it could not be flushed out of her system with bitter cordials, or washed from her skin, or picked out of her hair.”

“It’s not Brittney’s face, not her smile, not even her eyes. All of that surface stuff made the world see her as beautiful, but it was the deeper stuff that made her different.”