“Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not only naked women but also women with their skin flayed clean off”

“Thinking no more about it, he stepped off into that cool space, that fast descent to her, with nothing in his mind but a memory of a curve of her shoulder, naked, as he had never seen it.”

“She saw now that he was like an illusionist who captivated women with a little sleight of hand and once she had seen the mechanism it had lost all power for her.”

“He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him.~ Stephen speaking of Rachael”

“Oh, this coming back to an empty house,' Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People - though perhaps it was only women - seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.”

“He would enter silently and wake Magdalyn roughly. He loved Magdalyn's scream. He would beat her savagely and acuse her of plotting against him.If she begged and swore it wasn't true like most frightened women would, he'd throw her off the balcony. If she cursed him, he would bang her, matching her defiance with an equal degree of brutality, and she would live another day. Before he left, he would hold her tenderly in his arms and whisper that he was sorry, that he loved her. Decent women always wanted to see something good in him. He shivered in anticipation.”