“Did that remind anybody else of something?""Yes," Eve said, tapping her lower lip with a bloodred fingernail. "How much I need to shave her head while she's sleeping.”

“I love you, Mallory," he said very quietly, very seriously. "So damn much."Warmth and affection and need and so much more rushed her. "I know.""You know?""Yes.""Well, hell," he said with a small smile and a shake of his head. "You might have told me and saved me a lot of time.""How about I tell you something else?" she said. "I love you, too.”

“How big are souls anyway?" asked Coraline.The other mother sat down at the kitchen table and leaned against the back wall, saying nothing. She picked at her teeth with a long crimson-varnished fingernail, then she tapped the finger, gently, tap-tap-tap against the polished black surface of her black button eyes.”

“There was a deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive. And as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal till I could see in the moonlight the moisture Then lapped the white, sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited. ”

“Was there another life she was meant to be living? At times she felt a keen certainty that there was ― a phantom life, taunting her from just out of reach. A sense would come over her while she was drawing or walking, and once while she was dancing slow and close with Kaz, that she was supposed to be doing something else with her hands, with her legs, with her body. Something else. Something else. Something else.”

“He looked at her curiously. He did something that surprised her then, and took her hand, turning it over. She looked down at it, at her bitten fingernails, the still-healing scratches along the backs of her fingers.He kissed the back of it, just a light touch of his mouth, and his hair-as soft and light as silk-brushed her wrist as he lowered his head. She felt a shock go through her, strong enough to startle her, and she stood speechless as he straightened, his mouth curving into a smile."Mizpah," he said.She blinked at him, a little dazed. "What?""A sort or goodbye without saying goodbye," he said.”