“She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.”

“She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.”

“She laughed, and the desert sang.”

“Beautiful songs could sometimes take a person out of themselves and carry them away to a place of magic. But when Jill sang, it was not about the song, really. She could sing the phone book. She could sing a shopping list. Whatever she sang, whatever the words or the tune, it was so beautiful, so achingly lovely, that no one could listen and be untouched.”

“Dawson, she knew, had saved Alan's life- but in the end, he'd saved Jared's as well. And for her that meant...everything. 'I gave you the best of me,' he'd told her once, and with every beat of her son's heart, she knew he'd done exactly that.”

“She was his wife in every way that mattered and that would save her.”