“Last night they had said and done all those things, and now they were like strangers in a bus queue. The mistake she had made was to fall asleep and break the spell.”

“A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.”

“She recalled how Pauline had fallen off a bus one night, late, went skidding into Creedmoor. In a novel, it would have portended the fall they were all about to take”

“As they were falling asleep, Gillian could have sworn she heard Ben say Fate--as if they were meant to be together from the start and every single thing they'd ever done in their lives had been leading to this moment. If you thought that way, you could fall asleep without regret. You could put your whole life in place, with all the sadness and the sorrow, and still feel that at last you had everything you ever wanted. In spite of the lousy odds and all the wrong turns, you might actually discover that you were the one who'd won.”

“There were no dreams that night. Tina fell asleep to the feeling of Lockie’s ribs moving up and down. It felt strange to be touched by another person. She had not been touched by anyone for two years. Well, she had been touched, but those were the touches that burned your skin and made it crawl.”

“The fights they had now were much worse. Isabella had never fought like this with anyone before. With Ben, she had all-out, drunken marathon fights that lasted for hours. She was sure the neighbors thought they were crazy.”