“You're wicked - nothing but a wicked woman! The scrawniest cat in the stable looks after her young better than you. Why don't you think of him? He's little . . . What does he know of the world and of death? What's he thinking while you're lying hrere like a statue, weeping and wailing? Anyone would think you were the first widow in the history of the world and that no one had ever lost a husband before. Well, you aren't. What you are is selfish and lazy, and if Hector can see you from the Elysian Fields, he'll be in torment at the way you're treating his child. His child. The moment he's dead, the moment he's no longer here, you change completely. Where's the old Andromache? I know it's not my place, but you've been the only mother I ever knew, and how do you think I feel, when you push me away and won't talk to me, and won't listen, and won't let me hold you when you cry? I feel useless and stupid and I wish I could leave this sad place and go back to the Blood Room. There at least they have the kind of wounds I know how to do something about . . .”

“Andromache: See, I've stopped crying. I won't cry ever again, I promise you.Helen: Don't promise that. Never promise that. Tears are good sometimes. They clear the heart of sorrow. Cry.”

“He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that.”

“You could tell a horse everything, and it wouldn't judge you or condemn you or think you stupid. A horse had no opinion at all about the way you looked.”

“What did you think about?" I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won't do it again. And besides, I wasn't thinking about Xander either. "I thought about angels," I say."Angels?""You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven." "Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?" He asks."I don't know. No. Do you?""I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have.”

“Well, I never been to much school, you understand, but it seems to me that you're assuming something you shouldn't assume... that God sees the world like you do; one thing at a time, from just one spot. Seems to me that he's supposed to be everywhere, know everything. ...Think about that; he knows what you're feeling, how you're hurting. Feels my pain, your pain like it was his own. Hell son, the question isn't how God could care about just one person; question is, how could he not?”

“I didn't think about how it might have changed me. But I watched my brothers give their hearts away and I think, Don't you know better? Hearts are breakable and I think even when you heal, you're never what you were before.”