“...two Protestants, amazingly bound to Catholics and bemused at the strange tides of fate that had washed over them; two men left alone by the misfortunes of life, and now surprised to find themselves the heads of households, holding the lives of strangers in their hands.”

“Even if there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn't be happy. One them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.”

“I don't believe in a country where it's more acceptable to see two men holding guns than two men holding hands.”

“They were orphans of war, washed up on that little island in a tide of blood. What made them amazing wasn't that they had miraculous powers; that they had escaped the ghettos and gas chamges was miracle enough.”

“And so, a never-ending, rather edgy conversation between them, an undercurrent of roiling sound that reminded them they were married, they had two sons, they were living a life, they had preparations to make and disasters to avert and a world to interpret, sign by sign, symbol by symbol, to each other, and that at this point the only fate worse than staying together would be trying, each of them, to live alone.”

“Edward was dead. The magnitude of the news reverberated through me, thickening the air. His suffering was over. Yet what had he left behind? An England torn between Catholic and Protestant.”