“Husband, we talked about this," Persephone chided. "You can't go around incinerating every hero. Besides, he's brave. I like that."Hades rolled his eyes. "You liked that Orpheus fellow too. Look how well that turned out.”

“Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.”

“I wanted a guy like Orpheus. Orpheus has gone through Tartarus to rescue his wife—that was love. Hades probably didn't even know the meaning of the word love.”

“I never thought of it like that. I always thought of you as a part of me, like my own eyes or my own hands. You don't go around thinking 'I love my eyes, I love my hands', do you? But think what it would be like to live without your eyes or your hands. To be mad, or to be blind. I can't talk about it. It's how I feel.”

“He rolled his eyes. "You just like me for my body. Admit it." "Well, yeah..." His lashes lifted and his eyes glittered like jewels. "I feel like man-candy”

“It's like a boulder rolling down a hill - you can watch it and talk about it and scream and say Shit! but you can't stop it. It's just a question of where it's going to go.”