“Incense smokes, and love takes care,
In her blue bed the virgin died;
The fire broods, the day falls,
The Angel, sisters, knocks on the door.”

“I eventually grew to hate him after I heard him having sex with my sister. I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister’s vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister’s moans. I stood there and listened to it all. So my sister, who was four years younger than me, managed to lose her virginity before I did.”

“It's not a handicap, because when you go to bed, I take [the hearing aid] off, and the phones ring, the maids vacuum, people knock on doors, and I don't hear any of that.”

“I fall in love with Britain every day, with bridges, buses, blue skies… but it’s a brutal world, man.”

“A day out from the bay of Saardos, Drokler honored the brass Rorn god in the prow with a pound of incense.
The blank god mask stared back at them through the pall of sweet blue smoke…. It gazed in myopic stillness out over the long shock of the waves, ignoring their words, their presence, their costly offering.”

“Tatiana, I love you. Do you hear me? I love you like I’ve never loved anyone in my whole life. Now, get up. For me, Tatia. For me, please get up and go take care of your sister. Go on. And I’ll take care of you.” His lips kissed her cheek.”

“Experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. If you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. And if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. Hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue.”

“She had the look in her eye when you kick and kick at the door and it doesn't open, when you write a boy letters and letters and he never loves you, not ‘til the day he dies. Not even then.”

“I been knocking on the door that holds the throne.
I been looking for the map that leads me home.
I been stumbling on good hearts turned to stone.
The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone.
We take care of our own.
We take care of our own.
Wherever this flag’s flown,
We take care of our own.”

“Fire is a fragile lover, court her well, neglect her not; her faith is like a misty smoke, her anger is destructive hot.”