“I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra. A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindless inclines his head towards my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.”

“He was evil. Cruel, capricious, and dangerous as a cobra. A prince of darkness.Completely evil, and completely in love with her.”

“Trick looks up and his eyes meet mine. I am a deer caught in the headlights. I am a girl charmed by the cobra. I am breathless and mesmerized. And then he grins. Just like that, I'm his. Whether he knows it or not.”

“In a fight one must always be a COBRA and strike in the eyes of an opponent.”

“I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another reading while eating.”

“Randy stared into the glass he held in his hand, gazing into its cobra eyes. A double shot of thirty-year-old single malt whisky. You can’t be an alcoholic when you only drink top shelf. Right?”