“Maria?... She's been writing all this down? Oh, bless her...' He leafed on through the pile. 'Although that's not how that happened... and no, she's wrong, bowties are cool.”

“Suddenly Damask found herself staring down at the flowers through a dazzle of tears. The words sounded so innocent and so disarming - she remembered that she hadn't wanted to come through the beautiful woods at all; and there was no danger, nothing wrong except the wickedness of her own heart. She looked at Danny's big, brown, work-scarred hands gently gathering the flowers and her love for him was a physical pain. Oh, how she loved him; how she wished that he would ask her to marry him!"Norah Lofts”

“I didn't hit her, man, what happened was that Maria was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and wanted to try the spanking thing," said Luscious Skin. "That's very Maria," said Pancho. "She takes her reading seriously.”

“See the bowtie? I wear it and I don't care. That's why it's cool.”

“This is Morbidia," said Vlad. "Although she's been calling herself Tracy lately, to be cool.”

“She had to tell him, while she still had time, how wrong he’d been and how right she’d been. How wrong not to love her more, how wrong not to cherish her and have sex at every opportunity, how wrong not to trust her financial instincts, how wrong to have spent so much time at work and so little with the children, how wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes: she had to tell him all of this, every single day.”