“She loves me. She must, because she left flowers in the fridge from her date. She knows how I love flower salad.”

“I know a woman loves me when she leaves me leftovers in the fridge from the date she went on the night before.”

“She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and flowers. It was not passion she felt: not the passion of the body, though that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of the life which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined was centered love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was in love with what he meant to her as someone she could love.”

“She left me at the worst possible time because I knew her enough to know I was completely in love with her, but she didn't leave me with enough memories.”

“Aphrodite then promised Zeus that as soon as the girdle could be removed, she would reserve her flower for him. And she told him that her flower, as Nerites had advised her, was like a lovely oyster & she hoped that he liked oysters. And she told him that that was all that she had to give him in return for his seed. And she hoped that he would swallow her flower just as she swallowed his seed.”

“Cerulean left. I wondered if she was from Flower Planet. Blue flowers were rare - one might take a name from that.”