“His response to them as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man. He could interpret their naked presence in his hands only as a cosmic oversight destined to be rectified speedily, and he was driven always to make what carnal use of them he could in the fleeting moment of two he felt he had before Someone caught wise and whisked them away.”

“His response to them [women] as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man.”

“[Picasso] loved...women for the sexual, carnivorous impulses they aroused in him. Mixing blood and sperm, he exalted women in his paintings, imposed his violence on them, and sentenced them to death once he felt their mystery had been discharged and the sexual power they instilled in him had dulled... Women were his prey. He was the Minotaur. These were bloody, indecent bullfights from which he always emerged the dazzling victor.”

“Even before Laurent had hit the ground,the man had drawn his sword.Damen was too far away. He was too farto get between the man and Laurent, heknew that, even as hedrew his sword--even as he wheeled hishorse, felt the powerful bunch of theanimal beneath him. There was only onething he could do. As the spray of watersheared up from under his horse, hehefted hissword, changed his grip, and threw.It was, emphatically, not a throwingweapon. It was six pounds of Rabatiansteel, forged for a two-handed grip. Andhe was on a moving horse, and many feetaway, and the man was moving too,towardsLaurent.The sword drove through the air andtook the man in the chest, ramming intothe ground and pinning him there.”

“The fatted calf, the best Scotch, the hoedown could all have been his too, any time he asked for them except that he never thought to ask for them because he was too busy trying cheerlessly and religiously to earn them.”

“They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.”