“A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.”

“My theory is that everyone at one time or another has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who's different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.”

“Your grand daughter may not be looking for trouble, but trouble is looking for her.”

“Sometimes they'd be there for over an hour, the woman pointing out the catalpa trees, the sparrows, the streetlights,the porch, the little boy repeating the words. They laughed as though everything were a marvel in this rundown neighborhood. All common objects no normal person would bother to take note of, unless she thoughts she'd made a terrible mistake, someone who came back again, hoping that if she walked down the same street fate would whirl her backward in time until she was 17, when the future was not something she had stepped into, when it was just a idea, a moment, something that had not disappointed her yet.”

“It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was alone — maybe even more alone — than I was…”

“At first it appeared as if something with wings had fallen from above... perhaps an angel who had faltered then drowned, in tears of this poor tired world.”

“Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.”