“He scarred her arm...but she did not care because she loved him and she knew that love leaves a wound that leaves a scar.”

“Where did love begin? What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea? Was there a day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you?”

“She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave”

“She was a bright disc in him that left him sun-spun. She was circular, light-turned, equinox-sprung. She was season and movement, but he had never seen her cold. In winter, her fire sank from the surface to below the surface, and warmed her great halls like the legend of the king who kept the sun in his hearth.”

“She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings. She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly scale an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t'aime.”

“Infatuation. First Love. Lust. My passion can be explained away. But this is sure: Whatever she touches, she reveals.”

“We live in a world of buy it or leave it. Love does not signify.”