“She'd given it two good years. The problem was, Don had only given it one.”

“Was that what Nell had done, too? Forsaken the life and the family she'd been given, to focus instead on the one she'd been without.”

“She'd once told me that I was probably the only person on earth who'd be given more than one soapbox in their lifetime because their first one had been worn out.”

“[Her life] had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hair-brush and told, "There you go." She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush.”

“Five years with the dowager - Good God, she ought to be given a title in her own right as a penance for such as that. No one had done more for England.”

“We were given: Two hands to hold. Two legs to walk. Two eyes to see. Two ears to listen. But why only one heart? Because the other was given to someone else. For us to find.”