“Here at last is the thing I was made for.”

“When was the last time you were with a man? In the Biblical sense.""I thought the Bible frowned on that."That made him chuckle. "You're talking to a preacher's son here. The Bible frowns on many things, and yet seems good on slavery and selling your daughters, so I'm thinking it's schizophrenic at best.”

“You were the only thing that made me feel safe when the earthquakes threatened to break me. I needed you here because when you're not here, I don't have a home.”

“Here was a thing that would grow old; here was a thing that would turn beautiful and lose that beauty, that would inherit the grace but also the bad ear and flawed figure of her mother, that would smile too much and squint too often and spend the last decades of her life creaming away the wrinkles made in youth until she finally gave up and wore a collar of pears to hide a wattle; here was the ordinary sadness of the world.”

“When I get to the end of my life, I want to be able to look back and know that my being here made things better - Daphne”

“I'm sorry I made you cry, it's the last thing I would ever want to do....Unless it's out loud....during a moment of passion”