George Merrill also touched my backside—gently and just above the buttocks. […] The sensation […] was as much psychological as physical. It seemed to go straight through the small of my back into my ideas, without involving my thoughts. If it really did this, it would have acted in strict accordance with Carpenter’s yogified mysticism, and would prove that at that precise moment I had conceived.

The author's early days were filled with agrestic surroundings.

Tali: My father is responsible for the lives of seventeen million people -- our entire race is in his hands. And I'm his only child. (Note: Tali is a Quarian.)

He walked behind a curtained doorway and returned first with a beautiful turban and a Bollywood-style Indo-Western suit with a matching pair of mojari shoes.