“His gaze, lowered toward the ground, slowly, leisurely drifts up, until it slams into mine with the heavy force of steel against steel. The green is back, emerald flames dancing behind clouds of bl...”

“Now I wonder if maybe allowing another person to give you strength takes a certain kind of strength in itself.To be able to lean all your weight on someone else with confidence in the knowledge the...”

“You understand what Im telling you, Tommy? You have a light inside you, and the only person who gets to decide whether that light shines or not is you.”

“And maybe . . . maybe hell even get more comfortable having me around. Open up, wanna chat more, and well become almost friends, orHey, he grumbles from behind me, am I paying you to stand there an...”

“I part my lips, but no words come out. I want to cry. Want to beg. Want to scream. But mostly, I want to hold him until I know hes going to be okay. Then I want him to hold me until Im okay, too.”

“Heartache is my constant companion, and were perfect for one another. Two co-dependent peas in a pod. My past and my future.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundes...”

“Let us love. Let our lives be a perpetual song of love for God, first of all, and for all human beings who suffer, love, and mourn. Let deep joy live in us. Let us be like the lark, enemy of the ni...”

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”

“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away a...”

“Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of makin...”