“Poverty, her mother has written, makes you clever, and Honora knows that this is true.”

“One day a man has a job, and life is full of possibilities. The next day the job and the car are gone, and the man cannot look his wife in the eye.”

“And yet. And yet. If asked - if pressed - Honora would have to say she is strangely content. It's an odd feeling that she cannot describe to anyone - not to her mother and certainly not to Sexton, ...”

“And though her husband will appear to come alive, she knows that it is lust - too quickly ignited and too quickly extinguished - that animates him.”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”

“Men work together,' I told him from the heart,'Whether they work together or apart.”

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”