“They fell to, on the ground. You’ve seen a bakerrolling dough. He kneads it gently at first,then more roughly. He pounds it on the board.It softly groans under his palms.Now he spreadsit out and rolls it flat. Then he bunches it,and rolls it all the way out again,thin.Now he adds water and mixes it well.Now salt,and a little more salt. Now he shapes itdelicately to its final shape and slides itinto the oven, which is already hot.You remember breadmaking!This is how your desiretangles with a desired one.And it’s not justa metaphor for a man and a woman making love.Warriors in battle do this too.A great mutual embraceis always happening between the eternaland what dies, between essence and accident.”

“Perry. I want to see your back."Another surprise, but he nodded and turned away. Dropped his head forward and took the moment to try and calm his breath. He jerked when she traced the shape of the wings on his skin, a groan sliding out of him. Perry silently cursed himself. He couldn't have sounded more savage if he'd tried."Sorry," she whispered... "He's magnificent. Like you," she added softly. That was what did it.”

“Jenna ",he groaned. And when he licked his lips, he tasted the salt of his own tears.”

“Jack was too absorbed in his work to hear the bell. He was mesmerized by the challenge of making soft, round shapes of hard rock. The stone had a will of its own, and if he tried to make it do something it did not want to do, it would fight him, and his chisel would slip, or dig in too deeply, spoiling the shapes. But once he had got to know the lump of rock in front of him he could transform it. The more difficult the task, the more fascinated he was. He was beginning to feel that the decorative carving demanded by Tom was too easy. Zigzags, lozenges, dogtooth, spirals and plain roll moldings bored him, and even these leaves were rather stiff and repetitive. He wanted to curve natural-looking foliage, pliable and irregular, and copy the different shapes of real leaves, oak and ash and birch.”

“Do you know a cure for me?""Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water.""Salt water?" I asked him."Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”

“We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.”