I swear on St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals.” Seeing Poppy’s hesitation, Beatrix added enthusiastically, “If a band of pirates kidnapped me and took me to their ship and threatened to make me walk the plank over a shiver of starving sharks unless I told them your secret, I still wouldn’t tell it. If I were tied by a villain and thrown before a herd of stampeding horses all shod in iron, and the only way to keep from being trampled was to tell the villain your secret, I—

I had to wait for someone special. Someone who would make my heart feel as if it's been trampled by elephants, thrown into the amazon, and eaten by piranhas.

The baby woke up before you did. I took him to the other room to let you get a little more sleep. We've been watching a game." "Did he cry?" "Only when he realized the Astros were having another first-round play-off flame out. But I told him there's no shame in crying over the Astros. It's how we Houston guys bond.

You can't love someone new without getting over the last one.

Aristotle taught that stars are made of a different matter than the four earthly elements— a quintessence— that also happens to be what the human psyche is made of. Which is why man’s spirit corresponds to the stars. Perhaps that’s not a very scientific view, but I do like the idea that there’s a little starlight in each of us.

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.

A woman could do that to you - reach that place in your soul where the best and worst of you was kept. And once she was there, she owned that place and never left.