Your breasts are alabaster orbs.' "What?" Rufus objected. "That's stupid. I'm not saying that." "Do you have some better suggestion?" "Why can't you just say she's got a fair set of titties?

Is it truly so unfathomable, that an imperfect girl might be perfectly loved?

He quietly groaned. Again and again, he’d witnessed this phenomenon with his friends. They got married. They were happy in that sated, grateful way of infrequently pleasured men with a now-steady source of coitus. Then they went about crowing as if they’d invented the institution of matrimony and stood to earn a profit for every bachelor they could convert.

That’s it,” she said, balling her hands in fists. “I’m not letting you out of it this time. I insist that you take me to Scotland. I demand you ruin me. As a point of honor.

Whatever soul I had, Katie, I think I placed it in your keeping twenty years ago. And now, it's as if...every time we kiss, you give a little piece of it back.

He couldn’t compare a woman to a torrentially beautiful monsoon, and then look surprised that he’d gotten wet.

Men never hesitated to declare their presence. They were permitted to live aloud, in reverberating thuds and clunks, while ladies were always schooled to abide in hushed whispers.