“..numbed by disappointment and betrayal, like a child who had been awakened suddenly from a summer dream about christmas morning.”

“This was what Parker had learned early on about disappointment; its sting lasts only in the beginning, only until the body goes numb from its repetition.”

“There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

“The morning heat had already soaked through the walls, rising up from the floor like a ghost of summers past.”

“Rest against my heart. Let me watch over your dreams. And know that tomorrow morning, and every morning after that, you'll awaken next to someone who loves you.”

“She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe.”