“And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)”

“he'd never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion on the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they this weilded "power" barbarically so the world would not find them out”

“That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.”

“As far as I could see, she didn't take any better care of her apparel than I did mine, but I owned shirts that looked like they'd been run through a car engine half an hour after I removed the price tags, and she had socks from high school that were still as white as palace linen. Women and their clothes often astounded me this way, but I figured it was one of those mysteries I'd never solve - like what really happened to Amelia Earhart or the bell that used to occupy our office.”

“The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulnerable we were because of how much we loved her. The fear - that something could happen to her at any moment, something I'd be helpless to stop - had become so omnipresent in my life that I sometimes pictured it growing, like a third arm, out of the center of my chest.”

“Those who did remember probably shrugged off the chill of her memory, turned their heads down to the sports page or up toward the approaching bus. The world is a terrible place, they thought. Bad things happen every day. My bus is late.”

“and she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could...”