Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan." I looked at him and it was not a friendly look. "Never tease a woman about her weight, Jean-Claude. At least not an American twentieth-century one." He Spread his hands wide. "My deepest apologies." "When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect.

I wasn't like most girls.

When I was younger, I'd wanted someone to promise me that things would work out and nothing bad would ever happen again. But I understood now that that was a child's wish. No one could promise that. No one. The grown-ups could try, but they couldn't promise, not and mean it.

Most women complain that there are no single, straight men left. I’d just like to meet one who’s human.

She should have remembered that people have given everything they own, everything they are, to be taken care of, and to have their pain gone. It's the lure of cults: the promise of a good family; it's what people think love is, but love isn't absence of pain, it's a hand to hold while you're going through it.

What do you do when you know you are breaking someone's heart, but to do anything else would break your own?

Children make that big a difference to you? He asked. I nodded. Yeah, they do. I never figured you as the maternal type. I'm not, but kids are people, Edward, little people trapped by the choices the adults around them make.