“We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. “I’m this way because my father made me this way. I’m this way because my husband made me this way.” Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.”

“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

“I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.”

“You know that old saying. Once you go dead, no one’s better in bed.”

“Good sex is like good bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”

“The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.”

“I know I want you,” he heard himself say, all his vows and his honor all forgotten. She stood before him naked as her name day, and he was as hard as the rock around them. He had been in her half a hundred times by now, but always beneath furs, with others all around them. He had never seeen how beautiful she was. Her legs were skinny and well muscled, the hair at the juncture of her thighs a brighter red than that on her head. Does that make it even luckier? He pulled her close. “I love the smell of you,” he said. “I love your red hair. I love your mouth, and the way you kiss me. I love your smile. I love your teats.” He kissed them, one and then the other. “I love your skinny legs, and what’s between them.” He knelt to kiss her there, lightly on her mound at first, but Ygritte moved her legs apart a little, and he saw the pink inside and kissed that as well, and tasted her. She gave a little gasp. “If you love me all so much, why are you still dressed?” she whispered. “You know nothing, Jon Snow. Noth—oh. Oh. OHHH.”Afterward, she was almost shy, or as shy as Ygritte ever got. “The thing you did,” she said, when they lay together on their piled clothes. “With your…mouth.” She hesistated. “Is that…is it what lordss do to their ladies, down in the south?””I don’t think so.” No one had ever told Jon just what lords did with their ladies. “I only…wanted to kiss you there, that’s all. You seemed to like it.””Aye. I…I liked it some. No one taught you such?””There’s been no one,” he confessed. “Only you.”

“Lift your hips for me, love.”

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”

“I want you, Hank. I’m much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you – and the only thing I’m ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two years, the brightest moments I found were the ones in your office, where I could lift my head to look up at you. I did not know the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. I know it now. That is all I want, Hank. I want you in my bed – and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. There’s nothing you’ll have to pretend – don’t think of me, don’t feel; don’t care – I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it’s to me you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but the sensation of pleasure which you despise – but I want it from you. You’d give up amy height of virtue for it , while I – I haven’t any to give up. There’s none I seek or wish to reach. I am so low that I would exchange the greatest sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab of a railroad engine. Amd seeing it, I would not be able to see it indifferently. You don’t have to fear that you’re now dependent on me. It’s I who will depend on any whim of yours. You’ll have me anytime you wish, anywhere, on any terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It’s such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please – I’m not afraid to admit it – I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve. You think that this is a threat to your achievement, but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt, and I – as my pride. I’m more proud of it than anything I’ve done, more proud than of building the Line. If I’m asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.”

“A gentleman holds my hand.A man pulls my hair.A soulmate will do both.”

“I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock. If I’m late start without me.”

“libidinous, adj.I never understood why anyone would have sex on the floor. Until I was with you and I realized: you don’t ever realize you’re on the floor.”

“To see and feel one’s beloved naked for the first time is one of life’s pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”