“He'd been coiled like a snake for years and the tension had gone slack and when he was ready to spring the spring wasn't there, but it could be recoiled.”

“...maybe great books were coiled within him like springs, books that could have separated inside from outside.”

“Indeed, there is pain when spring buds burst..."Wasn't there a Swedish poet who had said something like that? Or was she Finnish?”

“April light was unlike any other. It had a charming, optimistic unreliability like an overbid hand in poker. It gave a promise of spring that it wasn't sure it could keep.”

“Damen hadfound his gaze drawn to the easyarrangement of Laurent's limbs, thebalance of wrist on knee, the long, finelyarticulated bones. He had been aware ofa diffuse but growing tension, asensation almost like he was waiting . . .waiting for something, unsure what itwas. It was like being alone in a pit witha snake: the snake could relax, you couldnot.”

“She felt the snake between her breasts, felt him there, and loved him there, coiled, the deep tumescent S held rigid, ready to strike. She loved the way the snake looked sewn onto her V-neck letter sweater, his hard diamondback pattern shining in the sun. It was unseasonably hot, almost sixty degrees, for early November in Mystic, Georgia, and she could smell the light musk of her own sweat. She liked the sweat, liked the way it felt, slick as oil, in all the joints of her body, her bones, in the firm sliding muscles, tensed and locked now, ready to spring--to strike--when the band behind her fired up the school song: "Fight On Deadly Rattlers of Old Mystic High.”