“But so far their love had proved deeper than their doubts, their faith in each other more unshakeable than the fear.”

“That's the best you can hope for, Danny. That your life turns out like that patchwork quilt. That you can add some bright, sparkling pieces to the dirty, stained ones you've got so far. That in the end, the bright patches might take up more space on your quilt than the dark ones.”

“It's like this old patchwork quilt my momma used to have...Each piece on that quilt meant something. And some of those pieces were the damn ugliest things you've ever seen...But some of the pieces were so beautiful they almost hurt my eyes to look at when I was a kid...That's the best you can hope for, Danny. That your life turns out like that patchwork quilt. That you can add some bright, sparkling pieces to the dirty, stained ones you have so far. That in the end, the bright patches might take up more space on your quilt than the dark ones.”

“...and then Danny was moving on him in the rhythm they'd found so easily in the past, their bodies remembering the way of it as if they'd never been apart, as if they'd only been waiting to find each other again.”

“He didn’t know if his capacity to love had been stunted, buried beneath the need for survival for so long it had forgotten how to breathe....”

“Something in the mysterious combination of Danny and him burned hotter and brighter than anything he'd ever imagined.”

“finding what made you happy was only the beginning of the journey—figuring out how to keep it often proved to be the unreachable destination.”