“When the girl sitting at the next table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened.”

“She looked me in the eye without saying anything. We both knew what was going to happen next. There would never be a better moment. I leaned over and kissed her on the lips and if we had have been actors in a movie, the camera would have panned upwards at that point to capture fireworks exploding in the sky. I didn't need any fireworks or orchestral symphonies to complete the moment though, because for me it was perfect exactly the way it was.”

“And he knew that at that moment, they understood each other perfectly, and when he told her what he was going to do now, she would not say ‘be careful’ or ‘don’t do it’, but she would accept his decision because she would not have expected anything less of him.”

“He took a moment to get over the shock, and to remind himself that this had surely been difficult for her and she was probably bracing herself for a rejection.At least he hoped she was. If she wasn’t, she needed to do that straight away, because it was coming. God damn right it was coming.”

“Instead of answering, Will took a step toward her, and all at once, everything happened too quickly to even make sense of it. One second he was standing three feet away from her, and in the next he had a hand on her hip and was pulling her close. Leaning in, he kissed her. His lips were soft soft, and he was suprisingly gentle. Maybe it was simply that he'd caught her by surprise, but even so, she found herself kissing him back. The kiss didn't last long, and it wasn't the kind of earthshaking, soul-destroying kiss common in movies these days; but even so, she was glad it happened, and for whatever reason, she realized it was exactly what she'd wanted him to do.”

“I sit on the bench in front of Bell's Market and think about Homer Buckland and about the beautiful girl who leaned over to open his door when he come down that path with the full red gasoline can in his right hand - she looked like a girl of no more than sixteen, a girl on her learner's permit, and her beauty was terrible, but I believe it would no longer kill the man it turned itself on; for a moment her eyes lit on me, I was not killed, although a part of me died at her feet." (from the short story Mrs. Todd's Shortcut)”