"The great prayer wound its way into my sleep consciousness like a serpent, coil after shining coil of words - the voice of the muezzin sinking from register to register of gravity - until the whole morning seemed dense with its marvelous healing powers, the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendours of a language she would never know." Part I, Page 26

"'The waking of the body is the sleep of the spirit and the spirit's sleep a waking for the body.' And later, like a thunderclap, 'Evil is good perverted.'" Part I, Page 42

"If I protested that it was not kindness but love she might say with a grimace: 'If it were love you would poison me rather than let me go on like this.'" Part...