Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion - and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder.

Where did you learn to kiss like that?” I said, a little breathless. He grinned and pulled me close again. “I said I was a virgin, not a monk,” he said, kissing me again. “If I find I need guidance, I’ll ask.

Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman's part to bid them to stay, nor yet to reproach them for being what they are-or for not coming back.

...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?

To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live.

All I want, is for you to love me. Not because of what I can do or what I look like, or because I love you - just because I am.

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.