The Bloody Chamber

• a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement 
• away from girlhood, away from the white 
• ceased to be her child in becoming his wife 
• his kiss with tongue and teeth
• streaks of pure silver in his dark mane
• Her face is common property 
• expose her flat breast and elongated thighs to his brush
• crossed around my throat… Like an extraordinarily precious slit 
• assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh
• domestic lamplight that promised, warmth company
• bloody bandage 
• she was bare as a lamb chop
• I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes
• was the nature of my desirous dread for this mysterious being who, to show his mastery over me, had abandoned me on my wedding night
• The supreme and unique pleasure of love is the certainty that one is doing evil
• The dead lips smiled
• imprisonment of the castle
• I must pay the price of my new knowledge
• a destiny as oppressive and omnipotent as himself
• The atrocious loneliness of that monster
• The heavy sword, unsheathed, grey as that November morning, sharp as childbirth, mortal
• It will serve me for a dozen more fiancées
• Do you think I shall lose appetite for the meal if you are so long about serving it?
• The sharp blade ripped my dress in two, and it fell from me
• The puppet master, open mouth, wide eyed impotent at the last, saw his dolls break free of their strings
• My husband stood stock-still, as if she had been Medusa