“That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.”

“I used to be a good fighter." She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. "If you'd known me ten years ago..."She's got no goo on her face, her hair's not sprayed, her nightgown's like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose and I see it. I see the white-trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn't take no shit from nobody.”

“Those eerie diamond eyes shifted over to her and she stilled, as if he's willed her to do so.There was a moment of silence. And then in a rough voice the man whose life she saved spoke four words that changed everything...changed her life, changed her destiny: "She. Comes. With. Me.”

“Somehow the bright beauty had gone from April afternoon and from her heart as well and the sad sweetness of remembering was as bitter as gall.”

“She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.”

“But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado,sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life,and dropping her down in the midst of this still,haunted desolation.”