“If she could have died...if she could have disappeared forever...but the solid surface of things refused to dissolve around her, and her body, her hateful hermaphrodite's body, continued in its stubborn, lumpen way, to live...”

“Andrew hated to see her humiliated and pathetic like this; but he half hated her too for landing herself in it, when any idiot could have seen...”

“He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up.”

“Studying the young woman’s long thin legs, Tessa wondered how different her life would have been if she had had legs like that. She could not help but suspect that it would have been almost entirely different.”

“She pressed the plunger down hard, in hope and without regret...Krystal Weedon had achieved her only ambition: she had joined her brother where nobody could part them.”

“Every hour that passed added to her grief, because it bore her further away from the living man, and because it was a tiny foretaste of the eternity she would have to spend without him.”

“Her face was a synthesis of perfect symmetry and unusual proportion; he could have gazed at it for hours, trying to locate the source of its fascination.”