“But sometimes I wanted to feel like a child, to know that he would stand in front of me while waves crashed towards us or arrows come at us.”

“I began to understand what bound Pearl to their simple mystery because i felt the same connection. in front of us, all around us, was the energy of life and growth. beauty was only a month away and it depended, in part, in what i could do.”

“I could feel their grief as if it were a beast holding us down.”

“Standing there, that day, I felt like Sally was being torn from my skin and there was no way I could ever fly free, without her right beside me.”

“If there was some way of knowing which boys were likely to turn out to be decent men, boys that could love us back as passionately as we felt we could love them, then we could banish the likelihood of divorce and unhappiness to a statistically unlikely outcome.”

“Love is like that, fragile and light. No wonder it rests upon our hearts in intangible moments, bids us follow fleeting thoughts and ideas and pursue our abstract imaginings.”

“Don't you find it strange that your mother would leave you?' Becky said. 'I can't imagine my other leaving me.'I'd never thought of it like that before. 'I don't think she knew what else to do.”