“She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed my hand upon her bosom between her breasts. She turned her lips toward my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the great author dipped deep into his colorful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, "Hello."”

“She places her hands around my neck and rests her head on my shoulder. I can smell the sex on her, and my hope is that she can smell the love on me.”

“Alexander tilted his head and kissed her deeply on the lips. He let go of her hands, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. They kissed as if in a fever… they kissed as if the breath were leaving their bodies.”

“All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl! She had torn up my sonnet by Dowson, she had shown my telegram to everybody in the Columbia Buffet. She had made a fool of me at the beach. She suspected my virility, and her suspicion was the same as the scorn in her eyes. I watched her face and lips and thought how it would be a pleasure to strike her, send my fist with all force against her nose and lips.”

“Tessa touched his wrist lightly with her hand. "Be brave," she said. "It's not a duck, is it?”

“Her soul in the balance, my heart in her hands
I made her a widow, she made me a man.”

““Tomorrow?”
“Sh.” She put her hand across his lips. “Never say the word!””

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

“Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips a sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She's got Bette Davis eyes”

“Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.
Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog[…]”