(35)
It is so strange, she concluded after they had exhausted all the wild beasts lurking in the forest of their flesh, that love and loathing, joy and distress, quietness and noise, all eventually blur and one is left wondering where one started and the other ended.   

(42)
The scatter of golden light, in the pitch darkness, unveiled with gratifying clarity what the couple had created: exquisitely molten eyes, the fragile incline of nose, and already, a clavicle of such elegance that lovers will expound its winged merit in letters years from now. However, it was more than his physical loveliness which overcame her: the awareness that this former tenant of her womb was a melange of their moods and dreams and history elicited in her a love for Vardhmaan, which she had not anticipated childbirth - of all experiences - might forge.  

(61)
At that moment, it struck Anuradha, that years from now, in the larger scheme of life, it would not be the evident things, or things of measure, but the impalpable, unmattering inklings which stay with them for ever: promises we ought never to have made, words that shouldn't have been spoken, glances we should not have cast. 

(62)
Is there for such an hour of the evening, a song? A song, whose note or phrase will take me by the arm, slip its finger into mine, and lend a space inside of which this occurrence might occur? 
A song of our time? A song of dusk? 

(72) 
Each night his stallion's legs shuddered as he rammed Edward again and again, such gentle violence, such refined debauchery, until all of Edward melted like the frost on the grass and felt he was everywhere: a liquid of flesh spreading over the bed sheets, over the Indian's sweating body, over the floor. 
'Does it hurt?'
'All love hurts,' Edward answered, dripping with sweat in the unreasonably cold English night. 

(73)
That evening their lovemaking was urgent and insane and, conducted to the melodic, circular cries of the black cuckoo, it was infused with a lyrical quality neither had encountered before. As he watched his lover grit his teeth with passion, Edward thought: I am Desire's secret, And Love's pariah.

(87) 
'There are losses to mourn and songs to sing. Oh, look, Anuradha, the rains are here!' Indeed, startingly silver spears of rain ambushed down, changing the topography instantaneously; the red earth heaved its arid chest to the liquid embrace of the mausam. 

(115)
But the honeymoon was long over, and now, when she gazed upon all that had happened afterward, she was overwhelmed by the realisation that the only purpose of innocence was that it had to be lost, and the most defining characteristic of love was that it must be longed for.

(166) 
As the train rolled into motion, the dusty city started to fade like the ellipsis points in a plaintive verse, and soon they were immersed into the blurs of countryside vignettes: white Bramha bulls tilling loamy black earth: crested egrets in the rice fields.

(198) 
'It's bigger than us,' Anuradha accepted. 'So we confuse ourselves over it. And of course, its vastness overwhelms. But then that is the only lesson in life. How to love. How to love well, with a detached eye but a concerned hand. How to understand and surrender to its countless contradictions. Most importantly, though, how to never stop loving.'

(251)
'People tear. Did I ever tell you that? We break and tear. Like cloth and furniture and everything in between.' Her voice was a curious blend of reverie and disdain. 'Awful truth is, we're in this alone. And there's no help coming. Of course I don't have any answers. But getting someplace with thirty-six bedrooms to hide in is definitely the way to bet. Now tell me what you think, lilies for my hair or white hibiscus?' 

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LSD-SDS