“If we became a pal to what scared us the most, we could find a simple way to ease all that bothered us, we would find peace, peace that we could live with.”

“Simple and predictable seem pretty darn tantalizing when you’re a witch.Lately, I’ve wished for a lot of things to be the way they were. Gone are my lustfor the macabre and the sweetly sinful fantasies of meeting a vampire. Somethingabout unconscious people slumped against the dark leather of the booths atcrimson made it less sexy.”

“I am 15 and you are 51, I know you are the best, to be loved by, everyone.”

“Finally when he climbed below deck after dark, wondering where his dinner was, perhaps with a storm come up and rough seas and blinding rains, I’d sulk and lure him into the warm and steamy darkness and from the hairs of his warm body I’d breed a myriad smiling, sparkle-eyed one-year-olds, my broods, my flocks. In the churning seas, below the waves, together inside our hammock woven in coarse sailcloth by Unguentine’s deft hands, a spherical webbed sack which hung and swivelled between the two walls of our bedroom, we would spin round and round with lapping tongues and the soft suction of lips, whirling, our amorous centrifuge, all night long, zipped inside against the elements. Now, years and years later, those nights, the thought and touch of them is enough to make me throw myself down on the ground and roll in the dust like a hen nibbled by mites, generating clouds, stars and all the rest.”

“Caine was a murderer. A liar. A cad. A skulker in shadows and a heartless wretch. What sort of woman or God would love someone like him?”

“You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I need to be with her. With every fibre of my being I ache for her. I’m in love.’‘I do understand,’ said Zoran. ‘It was same for me with Mrs Zoran when I first meet her. But the feeling goes away after few hours.”

“Caine usually woke from the recurring dream mid-air, having yet to be dashed upon the rocks, whimpering and panting like a child crying for his mother. Now he lifted his eyes to a dark, empty room in Jizan and the unusual, lingering scent of roses, and wept in his hands for his Father.”

“She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an entirely different instinct, altogether: to fool her and anyone within a dart’s range… to protect himself.”

“It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible—in short, an absolute woman-hater—had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen—nay, let us be just—had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in—sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface.”

“Linsey pulled away, smiling in a way that would have made him look almostangelic if it wasn’t for the blood smeared around his mouth. When he licked his lips clean, the angelic image became clearer. Blood welled up from two small cuts on his bottom lip, pooling in the full sweep his skin. I knew it wasn’t just my blood that I’d tasted.”

“For a moment she believed he had left, but as she shifted away from the wall she sensed him there beside the bed. He was very close. Wretched curiosity! But she would fight it and not look. “Katherine,” he whispered, his breath rolling in a warm wave across her cheek. A traitor tear spilled out, the humiliation was too much to contain. Gently, a finger dabbed the wetness from her skin. He said it again, softly, as though it pleased him just to say it, “Katherine.” “Viktor!” the accented voice bellowed from below. And then the shadow was gone. Darkness overwhelmed her then and carried her away to a land of crows and mocking strangers.”

“For the next several minutes we forgot about scones and lollipops and SATs and politicians and the Secret Service and hovered in a blissful place, population of two—Max and me. When I was kissing Max, the rest of the world, and all my problems faded away.”

“I, the great and powerful D.S. will create a harem for all the women in the world!!!! For a woman, no greater joy exists in the entire universe than to fuck me, the ultimate sex symbol!!!”

“Katherine stared intently at the cold, hard steel. She knew it would be loaded and that, if need be, there was extra ammunition in the back of the drawer. She would not be one of those girls, the ones who sit idly by and wait for the answers to come to them.”

“For thy sweet love remembr’d such wealth bringsThat then, I scorn to change my state with kings.”