When the going gets tough, the tough eat ribs.

Roarke cares very much for Beth and for me, and a few select others. But loves? I'm not sure he'd let himself risk quite that unstable an emotion.

You can’t just hope for happy endings. You have to believe in them. Then do the work, take the risks.

"It doesn't matter how long it takes." She thought of him, of them, the lifetime already shared. "It's how long it lasts."

Holding onto something that's gone only makes a sickness inside.

He was a wild one as a lad, and there's a look about him that says he could be again." Kathy sighed. "I've always had a soft spot for a wild heart in a man. Have you no sweetheart in the States then, Jude?" "No." She thought briefly of William. Had she ever considered her husband her sweetheart? "No one special." "If they're not special, what would the point be?

You got used to running things on your own." "What could he do about it when he's in Iraq and the car breaks down in Kansas?" Beckett gave her a long, quiet look. "I'm not in Iraq." "No, and it has to be said, I'm not in Kansas anymore." She lifted her hands, then let them fall. "It's not that I've forgotten how to be a couple, but that my experience in being part of one is different from yours. Maybe from most people's. And I've been on my own a long time." "Now you're not. I'm not fighting a war, and I'm right here." Needed to be here, he realized, with her.