“Something clicked in my brain. “I remember where I’ve seen you before. You’re Curran’s...”—lover, mistress, honey-bunny—“significant other.” Dear God, what could the Beast Lord’s concubine possibly want from me?”

“I’ve said to my kids, ‘I don’t want you to think I jumped away from you and clicked my heels and said bon voyage. It wasn’t like that at all. It just about destroyed me.'”

“Why didn’t you dare it before? he asked harshly.When I hadn’t a job? When I was starving? When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an artist, the same Martin Eden? That’s the question. I’ve been asking myself for many a day. My brain is the same old brain. And what is puzzling me is why they want me now. Surely they don’t want me for myself, for myself the same olf self they did not want. They must want me for something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that is not I. Shall I tell you what that something is? It is for the recognition I have recieved. That recognition is not I. Then again for the money I have earned and am earnin. But money is not I. And is it for the recognition and money, that you now want me?”

“Dear God,Reveal to me through stories something of what it is like to walk around in someone else's shoes.Show me something about myself in the stories I read, something that needs changing, a thought, a feeling or attitude.Deliver me from myself, O God, and from the parachial and sometimes prejudiced views I have of other people, other nations, other races, other religions.Enlarge by heart with a story, and change me by the characters I meet there.May some of the light from their lives spill over into mine, giving me illumination where there was once ignorance, compassion where there was once contempt.”

“I’ve seen you naked before, Maddie.”Her mouth dropped open. “You have not seen me completely naked, thank you very much.”His eyes glittered. “Actually, once before I have, when you were like five. You ran through the house buck-ass naked when you had chicken pox.”“Oh, dear God, why do you remember these things?” She was going to drown herself, right here in the tub.”

“You told me once, long ago, to look into a mirror and see your face. I refused to then. But now Mnimi has forced me to look at my own reflection. I’ve seen it through my eyes and I’ve seen it through yours. I wish to the gods that I could change what happened between us. If I could go back, I would never deny you. But I can’t. We both know that. Now I just want the chance to know you as I should have known you all those centuries ago. (Styxx)”