"Disgust did not rule out enjoyment, in my thoughts; indeed they were inseparable."

"It was glory I was after."

"Not that I was planning on sex. One stroke of lightning does not have to lead anywhere, but to the next stroke of lightning."

"...My body flowering with invisible bruises in those places were it had been touched."

"His moral character was of no importance to me; perhaps it was even necessary that it should be black."

"I saw that the whole of nature became maddeningly debased, maddeningly erotic."

"My mother inhabited a different layer of reality from the one I had gone into now."

"My mother's agnosticism and sociability were often in conflict in Jubilee."

"And women like my mother were in the minority. Moreover did I not want to be like my mother."

"I wanted men to love me, and I wanted to think of the universe...