“She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years.”

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”

“For years, every conversation she had with a man had been colored by calculation. Would she put him off is she spoke her mind? What did he want her to say? When a man took a mistress, he purchased not just the rights to her body, but the content of her thoughts. Sir Mark wanted her as she was, not as he wished her to be. The thought made her head hurt.”

“He understood that she needed some time to get used to "them." He didn't. He knew exactly what was happening, and he didn't need another week, another month, another year, to get things in perspective.He loved her. It was that plain. That simple.”

“[May] understood people and she let them be whatever way they needed to be. She had faith in every single person she ever met, and this never failed her, for nobody ever disappointed May. Seems people knew she saw the very best of them, and they'd turn that side to her to give her a better look.”

“She's thinking that what she's been doing all these years isn't what she wants to do anymore. Sometimes music flows to her and from her, but sometimes it doesn't. Lately that happens more and more, and she can't seem to find what she had and what made her special. But she can't tell her father because he'd be so disappointed in her, so disappointed to find out she's not extraordinary after all.”