“Language is the medium of literature, and the state of the language at any time can hardly fail to carry literary consequences.”

“Sweet, yet maddening, Kate yearned to take control and deepen the kiss, but he broke off every time she tried before catching her lower lip between his teeth as if to punish her. Their sharp edges sank into her swollen flesh without breaking the surface, his tongue immediately soothing any pain. The all-conquering, take-no-prisoners warrior had arrived.”

“Whereas I could conform to an emo crowd easily enough, pretending to matriculate from upper crust asshats was too surreal. Goose insisted my stellar attitude and superb language skills had to be put on hold while we were inside the building, which meant to had to keep my big fat cow shut. It was the equivalent of asking a little girl not to scream the first time she was personally introduced to Hannah Montana.”

“About the only good thing about being sex-starved and hornier than the blue wildebeest in mating season she'd once had to write an essay on, was the vast improvement on her pen-pal repertoire. Phone sex? Pah! Any schmuck could talk dirty and get off on it. The art of airmail sex, however, presented a much greater challenge and one she'd excelled at, if Mark's responses were anything to go by. It was a wonder the planes didn't catch fire.”

“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”

“We don't all have Duracell Bunnies, you know?" he said, practically growling in her ear and making her core muscles clench, disappointed to have nothing to grip onto. "Some of us have to work out our...frustration...in other ways.”

“All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.”