“Looking back, it was the thing in his life that shamed him the most: the times he was purposefully, calculatingly mean to Alice. It was those moments, and there had been many of them, that indicated to him that he was not a good person. He got mad at her for many things, but it was always really for the same thing: that she possessed his love and he couldn't seem to get it back.She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better”

“He does not deserve this. He has done many things, not all good, but he does not deserve this. And he never did get his priest.”

“She had not known how to tell him that his loving whispers were always in her ears, like a story she’d been told, the story of a thing she did not deserve. But he understood. He called those thoughts “the baby teeth of a snake,” and swore he would rip them out of her, and pledged to prove to her that the opposite was true. And he didn’t even have to explain to her what he meant by “the opposite”; she knew it was the opposite of her.”

“It sounded old. Deserve. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't his parents tell him their personal problems? If not him, then who? And if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the flavor was gone––she had a right to try to kill him too.Apparently he though he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.”

“A thing that had always struck her about the child was that he seemed so collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she realized that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his feelings; he hid himself to weep.”

“Sometimes Peter treated her like she was the only thing in the forest. Sometimes he was so distracted by the things around him that she had to keep up or be left behind. But a lot of times, she knew he did it on purpose, and she didn't have to know why. He seemed to have reasons for doing things even he didn't understand.”