“Men and women, they were beautiful and wild, all a little violent under their pleasant ways and only a little tamed.”

“To all the women and the men who ever loved me just a little.”

“Little as he knew of women, he was aware that as a sex they are apt to be startled by the sight of men crawling out from under the seats of compartments.”

“They lay on their heathery beds and listened to all the sounds of the night. They heard the little grunt of a hedgehog going by. They saw the flicker of bats overhead. They smelt the drifting scent of honeysuckle, and the delicious smell of wild thyme crushed under their bodies. A reed-warbler sang a beautiful little song in the reeds below, and then another answered.”

“She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”

“What can I say. We like our women only mostly tamed. Where’s the fun in a woman who’d never stab you just a little, if you pissed her off bad enough?”