Jamie: "I didn't want anybody to be weird around me." Landon: "Including me?" Jamie: "Especially you! You know, I was getting along with everything fine. I accepted it, and then you happened!"

I suppose [my life] has most resembled a blue chip stock: fairly stable, more ups than downs, and gradually trending upward over time. A good buy, a lucky buy, and I've learned that not everyone can say that about his life.

Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside the window.

Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing.

What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.

No buts," he said, "because there are none. You see yourself as someone who couldn't get away. I see the courageous woman who escaped. You see yourself as someone who should be ashamed or guilty because she let it happen. I see a kind, beautiful woman who should feel proud because she stopped it from happening ever again. Not many women have the strength to do what you did.

What's your heart telling you to do? I don't know.' Maybe, you're trying too hard to hear it.