The simple and most complex answer is love.

I know you love me, but I don't know why. I look at you and I just can't get why it's me. Every time I get my balance, I lose it again. Because it shouldn't be me, and I think it'd kill me if you ever figured that out.

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.

When we grow up, we lose the talent for loving without restrictions.

I loved the process of writing.

The tune was sad, as the best of Ireland was, melancholy and lovely as a lover's tears.

[First line] “The business of murder took time, patience, skill, and a tolerance for the monotonous.