“As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own special and peculiar form of beauty.”

“Ever had a woman say no to you, Dmitri?”“Once.” He turned the corner with a smile that made her want to cup his face, trace those beautiful lips with her own. “I married her.”

“Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.”

“It began with the twitch of her lower lip as it took on a life of its own, rippling outward to the corners of her mouth and forcing them upward into a helpless smile. She instantly clasped one hand over her mouth in a frantic attempt to silence the sound that was coming from her throat. The result was that she half-spluttered, half-coughed, her eyes painfully wide as she desperately wished a hole would emerge in the oriental carpet and mercifully swallow her up.”

“And carefully... tenderly... taking my time with every brushstroke, I sketch the curve of her neck, apply the crimson of her lips, form her face into a two-dimensional tribute to her beauty.”

“Lady Selyse was as tall as her husband, thin of body and thin of face, with prominent ears, a sharp nose, and the faintest hint of a mustache on her upper lip. She plucked it daily and cursed it regularly, yet it never failed to return. Her eyes were pale, her mouth stern, her voice a whip. She cracked it now.”