When you get tired of worrying and mourning your horse and trying not to be afraid, tell me and I'll do it for you a while so you can shut your eyes and sleep peaceful.

Razo hopped back up and adopted a posture that said he was completely unruffled, never had been, and in fact was ready to do something manly like lift boulders or swallow live worms.

I'm not hopeless, that's the problem. I'm too hopeful, if anything ... I'm so thick-headed it's taken me this long to give up on men, but I can't give up completely, you know? So I ... I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can't reject me because he isn't real!

Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

You've been quiet lately...but it's not so much the quiet as something inside the quiet.

...'Goose girl, may I kiss you?' She answered by... kissing him first.

She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds.