“He slowed to a walk. As he approached her he was surprised at just how pretty she was. She looked a little like Maureen O'Hara in those old pirate movies. His writer's mind kicked in and he thought, This woman could break my heart. I could crash and burn on this woman. I could lose this woman, drink heavily, write profound poems, and die in the gutter of turberculosis over this woman.This was not an unusual reaction for Tommy. He had it often, mostly with girls who worked the drive-through windows at fast-food places. He would drive off with the smell of fries in his car and the bitter taste of unrequited love on his tongue. It was usually good for at least one short story.”

“Your childhood," said Yackle coaxingly, as if she could smell his thoughts. As if she could sniff out those passages he hadn't chosen to retail at drink parties. Her words lulled him. The past, even a bitter past, is usually more pungent than the present, or at least better organized in the mind.”

“Rachel’s kiss reached inside him and twined around what passed for his soul. and when she took her mouth from his, she had it all. He knew he loved her with everything he was. Everything that he could be. There would never be another woman for him.And he could never tell her.”

“She is a cat," he thought. "That's all she is—a cat!"But that was not how his mind saw her—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless and undemanding.Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?”

“Mickey cursed under his breath, letting his head fall back against the wall. His c*ck still beat angrily against his clothing. Once he would’ve simply sent for a whore. Now that thought was oddly unsatisfying. He could have a willing woman, a woman who would do anything he might request of her, even the most exotic acts of sex, but instead his flesh wanted just one woman.A woman who was as fierce in her maternal love as he had been as a boy in his will to survive.”

“Austin could do little more than stare at the woman. "It's a prairie dog," he reminded her.Cautiously, she brushed her fingers over its head. "It's just a baby. Please help her."Dee was looking at him with so much hope in her big brown eyes that he couldn't do what he knew needed to be done. He slipped his gun into his holster. Thank God, she was married to his brother and not to him. Dallas could break her heart. Austin wouldn't.”