I want you more than I should," she heard herself say. "I have you less than I want.

She raised her eyes to his. They had both come from misery, she thought, and survived it. They had been drawn together through violence and tragedy, and had overcome it. They walked different paths and had found a mutual route. Some things last, she thought. Some ordinary things. Like love.

squats are a form of torture designed by people who don’t need to do squats in the first place

Look, if some guy dressed in his mother's clothes breaks in, fight him off until I get my pants back on.

You don't fix a man the way you do a fault in a pipe or a leak in a roof. You take him as he is, Mary Brenna, or you don't take him at all...adjustments can't be all made on one side, darling, else the balance goes off and what's being built just falls down.

Retirement wasn't a reward at the end of a well-run career ... it was a void surrounded by endless dull hours, haunted by memories of work.

Be yourself. Be true to that, to your heart. Patience. See what happens if you step back instead of bounding forward.