“Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.”

“On the plus side, if he ever had to fight through a roomful of adolescent girls, he only needed to blink (his velvet brown eyes framed in embarassingly long lashes) a few times, and they would all faint.”

“love is a hawk with velvet clawslove is a rock with heart and veinslove is a lion with satin jawslove is a storm with silken reins”

“What was the point in satin and lace if it didn't make a man struggle to speak?”

“Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro, who swayed beside him on his travels, leather-brown and skeletal, crowned with lace and gold circlet, hung about with chains of diamonds and pearls, her bone-fingers fantastically ringed.”

“Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.”