“How are you feeling?""Coffee.”

“How easily you forgive, Eleanor. How freely youabsolve the sins of others. Tell me, little one, when thetime comes, how will you absolve yours?With the first lash of the whip Nora felt a strip of fireburn across her back. She cried out from a pain soferocious she nearly choked on it.Like this, Søren, she dared answer only in her mind.This is how.”

“I know you want to fuck me. And I know you wish you didn’t. So how about we compromise and you can sit here and say, ‘No, Nora,’ ‘Don’t, Nora,’ ‘Stop, Nora,’ and I’ll ignore all those protests and slide right down on your cock anyway? And I’ll do it because no and don’t and stop aren’t your safe word. So you can finally get fucked and still sleep like a baby in your big lonely bed tonight feeling all clean and shiny and virginal because, after all, you did say ‘no’ and that awful Nora Sutherlin just wouldn’t listen.”

“I want to own you," Griffin whispered into Michael's ear. Michael smiled and for the first time in his life knew exactly what to say and how to say it. "You already do.”

“The Moonlight sonata is a strange piece of music. It's been called a Lamentation. You can feel that when you play it, can feel the sorrow and the endless repetitions. It's simple to play but maddeningly difficult to play well. The arpeggios allow great freedom of expression. Too much freedom in untutored, unskilled hands. They say Beethovan wrote it for a seventeen-year-old countess, the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. He may have loved her.”

“Nora— Forgive me for copyediting, but it must be said—you have raped the semicolon yet again. Stop it. It wasn’t asking for it no matter how it was dressed. If you don’t know how to use punctuation then do away with it altogether, write like Faulkner and we’ll pretend it’s on purpose.”Bite me, Easton, Nora said to herself as she corrected her sexually compromised semicolon in chapter eighteen. Seriously, bite me.”

“Hurt but do not harm?” Zach asked. “What’s the difference?” “Hurt is a bruise on the outside.” Nora sipped her mineral water delicately. “Harm is a bruise on the inside. If you’re a masochist, pain feels like love to you. Not being hurt is what hurts.”