“In the Community everything was black and white. Here, romantic relationships took on shades of grey; they were full of uncertainty, maybes, broken promises.”

“There were two choices in life. Survive or succumb. And most people weren’t even conscious of the path they chose. Because they chose for all the wrong reasons. Love, principles, dreams, desire. The world hadn’t changed. It had always been survival of the fittest.”

“The Board would like to come back and see you tomorrow, Ariana,' she mimicked. 'Any more questions?''Yes,' she answered in the Warden's Irish accent, 'I'd just like to know why I'm such an arsehole.”

“It was like a curse. He was her antidote. She was his poison.”

“[Ava] had always thought the main relationship in the family was the one between Nancy and her daughters. To have a family, you needed a father, of course, and Jimmy had played that role perfectly well, if you were okay with an old-fashioned interpretation of the job. But the Nickerson family was all about the women and their noisy, bickering, gossiping, interfering relationships with one another.And now it seemed that maybe she ahd been looking at it all wrong. Maybe she and Lauren were just the icing, and the basic, underlying cake of the family was the couple in front of her who had a shared history she knew very little about.”

“Timber and relationships are fragile. All it takes is one spark to destroy either of them.”

“I rewrapped the scarf around my neck, and thought about how excited Jake had been that first winter he was here. Maybe it was just as simple as this: that he'd been up here enough to know that there wasn't anything special about Willow Hill. Including me.”