“She raised her eyebrows in a look that she hoped conveyed how much she was all right with him leaving her. After all, he was a prince. The most powerful men and women on Earth had summoned him. She understood.And yet he was still here, with her."I'm fine," she said. "Go away.”

“Once, when he had just lulled her to sleep but she had gone no farther than dream's antechamber and was therefore still responsive to him, he said to her, "Good-bye, I'm going now." "Where?" she asked in her sleep. "Away," he answered sternly. "Then I'm going with you," she said, sitting up in bed. "No, you can't. I'm going away for good," he said, going out into the hall. She stood up and followed him out, squinting. She was naked beneath her short nightdress. Her face was blank, expressionless, but she moved energetically. He walked through the hall of the flat into the hall of the building (the hall shared by all the occupants), closing the door in her face. She flung it open and continue to follow him, convinced in her sleep that he meant to leave her for good and she had to stop him. He walked down the stairs to the first landing and waited for her there. She went down after him, took him by the hand, and led him back to bed.Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

“She would tell him what she wanted in her life--her hopes and dreams for the future--and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true. And the way he said it made her believe him, and she knew how much he meant to her.”

“She pulled away and looked at him. 'I kissed you and you left.'When Kat heard the pounding, she thought it was the beating of her heart. It was too loud, she thought. Hale was going to hear it; he was going to see it; and he was going to know how much power he had to hurt her.”

“She had been hesitant the first night, right before she had launched into him like a wild animal. The imprint of her violence had lasted on him well until the morning and while he had been hurt, he had loved the fact that she was into him, that she lusted after him fanatically, that she scratched him, wept on him, bit him and he was grateful that she let him see her like that: unhinged, throbbing and warm-skinned. She was powerful and thus ironically all the more defenceless in surrender. At times he felt as though she truly hated him, hated him for making her feel like this, for having to condescend herself just by wanting him. He felt as though she was warning him constantly through her seething, hurtling silence; to not let her down after she had disclosed so much of her soul to him. Her insecurities, her memories, her fetishes, her scent, her limbs; they had all been laid-bare in front of him and as he lay there next to the girl whose chest heaved and fell like the meter of a ghazal, he fell in love with that girl and her bundle of contradictions.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

“Aphrodite then promised Zeus that as soon as the girdle could be removed, she would reserve her flower for him. And she told him that her flower, as Nerites had advised her, was like a lovely oyster & she hoped that he liked oysters. And she told him that that was all that she had to give him in return for his seed. And she hoped that he would swallow her flower just as she swallowed his seed.”