“Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.”

“I stare at her for a long moment. I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.”

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

“Sometimes when you get olderand I'm not talking about you, I'm talking generally, because everyone ages differentlythings you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and...”

“After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled.”

“Don't mind Russ," he says. "He's a good kid underneath all those holes, although it's a wonder he doesn't spring a leak when he drinks”

“People were messy. They were defined not only by what they'd done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, molded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they st...”

“The children start school now in August. They say it has to do with air-conditioning, but I know sadism when I see it.”

“August stared at her, aghast. "Did I know that kissing you would bring your soul to surface? That - THAT - would have the same effect as pain or music? No, I must have missed that lesson."She stare...”

“nights and days came and passedand summer and winterand the sun and the windand the rain.and it was good to be a little islanda part of the worldand a world of its ownall surrounded by the bright b...”

“When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart...”

“A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.”

“So when a 'heterosexual' man learns to appreciate the noble woman of Proverbs 31, regardless of her looks, he is transcending his sexuality, not EXPRESSING it. Jacob labored fourteen years for Rach...”

“In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency..the product of that struggle is t...”

“I'd run you know. It's like when you're really busy doing something and you don't have time to think about things. Well, I'd run and run and run so I couldn't think.”