“Take sex, for instance.''What do you want me to do with it?''Try to be serious for a moment. Take the sex life of our father.'[...]Even after a couple of brandies he felt extremely reluctant to discuss sex and his father. 'It's something I'd rather not think about,' he said. 'We all come into existence as a result of a momentary embrace by our parents which find impossible to imagine. [...] We all assume we're the result of our own particular immaculate conception.”

“Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do--like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.”

“Because when push comes to shove, we really don't want to have sex with our friends... unless they're sexy. And sometimes we do want to have sex with our blackhearted, soul-sucking enemies... assuming they're sexy.”

“...you make it sound like this is work. I’m having a hard time thinking about sex as a project to manage.”He barely touched the cheeks of her ass, just a little tickle on her flesh, and her muscles clenched. “Only because you don’t take it seriously.”“I take it very seriously,” she shot back.“No, you take the choice of your partner seriously, but not the sex itself. The sex itself you view as something you have to give up to get to what you really want, and that’s companionship and affection. You can’t buy those with sex, Avery. Those will come or not, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing to any man. Not really. He’ll take sex from you even if he doesn’t particularly like you. He’ll take it because you offer it up so easily. Again—not the relationship, but the sex. You’re offering me easy sex. Sex where I don’t have to work, but I want to work because I do like you and I do feel affection for you. Do you understand?”“You think I should ask for more.”“No, I think you should demand more.”“That doesn’t sound very submissive...”

“Do Djinn even like sex?" "With the right person, we enjoy sex very much." "We enjoy it in a leisurely fashion, and we devote all of our attention to it. And our lovers crave it.”

“Most of our trainers said it was up to our discretion, and that we never had to use sex unless we felt it was necessary. Wink, wink. They also said that we should do whatever it takes to get the job done.”