“But no life was without it's strain & strife, not if it was fully lived. Opening up to experience, even the good ones like trust & love, was to open yourself up to the pain. I suppose the key was to not compound matters by making the rest of it unnecessarily hard. My need for control had certainly done that in the past. So I made a promise to myself in that moment. I would make a concerted effort to reach for what was soft & good in this world. I'd find a place to settle into, and hold still so that this world's good and soft could reach back & touch me as well.”

“That's what hiding away did, whether it was from the world or yourself, your past, or even your dreams. It took absolutely no effort to have a miserable life. But building a glorious one? A life worth living and sharing with others? That's what was hard." Joanna”

“People created chaos, not places, and they were damned good at it no matter where they lived. And when this glittering gem of a city teamed up with the world's oldest profession, fantasy piled atop fantasy; it could convince anyone that impulse was a virtue, not a vice.”

“There's this mental illness, right? It's called 'anhedonia.' It means 'without pleasure.' You can look it up, though all you really need to do is look around." She motioned to the door the other women had disappeared through, and to the world at large. "A good deal of people, mostly women, spend their entire lives in this state. It's a sort of half-death. But if you recognize this, you can fix it...You focus on bliss. Small pleasures. Fill your day with as many as you can fit into twenty-four hours. You devote every possible moment not to fulfilling another person-a man-but yourself."-Suzanne"Sounds hedonistic"- Joanna"But once you can do this, you start attracting everyone to you. You dont need compare yourself to some other girl, no matter how young or firm or perky she is.....Trust me. A woman like this, one at her best? We're the color of the world. We're the light and the beauty. So focus on your pleasure, and the man you want can't help but realize...that he may be a prince...but your a goddess.-Suzanne”

“Even now...she [Kit] still had a need to believe that most people, that most of life, was good. That belief was a sort of strength, too.”

“I think you look like the spawn of Satan.""Yeah, and you still look like my brother's favorite blow-up doll.""Speaking of, what's the deal with the size of my breasts in last month's manual?" He'd drawn me so top heavy a stiff wind could have knocked me off balance."Creative license," he said with a shrug."A little too creative.”

“I quickly found myself in the center of the room, trussed up to a sturdy, high-backed chair, which Joaquin happily assured me was an original Louis the Fourteenth. Oh goody. I'd hate to die bound to something from IKEA.”