“It might not have been Mike,' she said, 'but somebody left something somewhere.'I couldn't really argue with that. It was as succinct a summing up of the seeming randomness of events in life as I had ever heard.”

“I feel as if something has been torn suddenly out of my life and left a terrible hole. I feel as if I couldn't be I — as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It's good to see you again — it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul.”

“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”

“I couldn't forget. I couldn't break. She had the power to break me. No one had ever been given that power, ever.”

“I had to do something," she said. "I couldn't just sit and wait for life to happen to me any longer.”

“What I saw was more than I could stand. The noise I heard had been made by Little Ann. All her life she had slept by Old Dan's side. And although he was dead, she had left the doghouse, had come back to the porch, and snuggled up by his side.”