“Instead, it had slipped into her subconscious, and worked its way beneath her skin.”

“One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn't mattered.”

“Her skin is pale as watermelon sucked free of its juices.”

“Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not only naked women but also women with their skin flayed clean off”

“The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.”

“Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.”

“Our minds work alike, she thought. She had found her partner, her equal, the one to work and live and love with her. Her soulmate.”

“The vessel, though her masts be firm,
Beneath her copper bears a worm.”

“She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.”

“Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.”