...as if someone had thrown a hand grenade into the middle of a teddy bear orgy and the only survivors had had their fur blown off.

Just because he was pretty didn't mean he couldn't be improved by a smack upside the head with a piece of earnest hickory

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.

As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education.

It was an eight-harlot inn, if that's how you measure an inn. (I understand that now they measure inns in stars. We are in a four-star inn right now. I don't know what the conversion from harlots to stars is.)

Lonliness evaporated off of them like the steam off dry ice, and by morning it was just a cloud on the ceiling of the room, then gone with the light.

I was seven before I realized that you could eat breakfast with your pants on.