“He could burn her up alive; he could do it in a minute flat, and that's not easy to forget.”

“Let everyone see the blood,' he said. 'Don't clean it up. That's the only way people remember.'... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.”

“He backed off, the way he always does, but it won't happen a second time. If he ever sees her again he's going to go right up to her and ask her to marry him, that's what he'll do. He's sick of letting fate roll right past him.”

“All this kissing was making her crazy; it was reminding her of what she could feel, and how it could be when you wanted someone as much as he wanted you.”

“But at long last she had some privacy and could go more than ten minutes without someone getting in her business, informing her that everything she did was wrong. As if she didn't already know that.”

“He was so pale the freckles stood out on his face the way they did when he was upset or hadn't slept. She thought they might be telling her something if she could only understand the language of freckles.”

“Nothing could do that to them, that's what they used to whisper as they sat on the back stairs, in the dark and the dust, as if desire were a matter of personal choice.”