“The newspaper got it all wrong. They should have called me a harlot and a slut, a poseur and a tease, a nubile and naive,a slattern and a sleaze, a vandalist and anarchist, a dirty dilettante with a fatal and fervent disease. Because I was all of those things in the twelve days when there was too much rain and I was burning and I found and lost Justine.”

“Slattern! What a wonderful new word. 'Slattern,' I murmur appreciatively to Patricia.'Yes, slattern,' Bunty says firmly. 'That's what she is.''Not a slut like you then?' Patricia says very quietly. Loud enough to be heard, but too quiet to be believed.”

“But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. 'This Man Died from Living Too Much'.”

“Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drovepeople to madness. That’s bad enough. The Book of Shhhalso tells stories of those who died because of love lost ornever found, which is what terrifies me the most.The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both whenyou have it and when you don’t”

“Why couldn't I have a fatal disease? It'd be so much easier.”

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”