“From her own life experience Keldaren knew that loveable hunks were in short supply anywhere in the galaxy, loveable hunks who knew her were an extinct species, and that more marketing companies than friends had her phone number.”

“The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?”

“if you were to be loved be loveable”

“Men she knew'? - she had conceded vaguely to herself that all men who had ever been in love with her were her friends.”

“Her own fearless audacity had surprised her, though she knew she had been born for more than her life had asked of her thus far.”

“He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.”