“She married him two years ago for love, or so she thought, and he's a good enough man but a devotee of household silence. His idea of marriage is to spray WD-40 on anything that squeaks. ... The quiet only subsides when Harland sleeps and his tonsils make up for lost time. ”

“She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harland: being there in person is not the same as watching. You might see things better on television, but you'll never know if you were alive or dead while you watched.”

“If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.”

“I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”

“That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony.”

“It was his habit, when he rewrote anything, to shed himself of all earlier versions. He kept a clean house.”

“The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.”