“Montana A great many small failures have brought me to thisDark room where, against the teachings of the church,I lie in the forgiving dark with you and we kissAnd loosen our clothing and feel the hot urgeToward nakedness, man's natural destination,The slow unbuttoning, unclasping, until at lastWe lie revealed. The fine sensationOf you on my skin. A slender woman as vastAs Montana and I am now heading westOn a winding road through the dark contoursOf mountains and into a valley, coming to restIn a meadow that I recognize as yours. This is what I drove across North Dakota to find: This sweet nest. And put all my failed life behind.”

“Love doesn't keep a score of wrongs. Love doesn't bring up past failures. None of us is perfect. In marriage we do not always do the right thing. We have sometimes done and said hurtful things to our spouses. We cannot erase the past. We can only confess it and agree that it was wrong. We can ask for forgiveness and try to act differently in the future. Having confessed my failure and asked forgiveness, I can do nothing more to mitigate the hurt it may have caused my spouse. When I have been wronged by my spouse and she has painfully confessed it and requested forgiveness, I have the option of justice or forgiveness. If I choose justice and seek to pay her back or make her pay for her wrongdoing, I am making myself the judge and her the felon. Intimacy becomes impossible. If, however, I choose to forgive, intimacy can be restored. Forgiveness is the way of love.”

“I used to hope that if I went to church long enough, all my inside weight would go away. That ain't right. Jesus may have come to take away our sins, but he left our feelings right where they've always been. I still have inside me some of what I've always had, built up over a lifetime. I just keep adding to it, everyday, like everybody else, and hope the stew gets better the more ingredients I put in.”

“TearsI struggle with myself to keep them insideThe feelings that I have tried to deny.I tell everyone that I am okayWhen I battle to make it through each day.In my world of illusions where everything was rightI cried myself to sleep each night.You notice the tears filling my eyesAs I begin to shed my shallow disguise.My pain, confusion and a few of my fearsDrop to the ground in the form of my tears.It feels so good to release the emotions built upTo say what I feel instead of bottling them up.As I cry a weight seems to lift from meI feel so much better now that you can see.And now that you know what it is that I feelWill you fight the battle with me andhelp my wounds heal?”

“One thing," I said, when we had broken apart and the swirling feeling in my head subsided. "Maybe...don't tell your mom too much about this. I think she has ideas." "What?" he asked, all innocence, as he put an arm around my shoulders and led me back toward his house. "Don't your parents cheer and stare when you make out with someone? Is that weird where you come from? I guess they don't get to see it much, though. From jail, I mean." "Shut it, Weintraub. If I knock you down in the snow, these kids will swarm and eat you.”

“I'm a Cancer, you know," I tell her. "So it's hard for me to talk. And I have all these weird dreams, not the ones with the Sony Girls - ha-ha - but mostly where I mow the lawn. Sometimes I just wash the car, like Gupta! But there's this voice in my head, and Lt. Kim thinks that once we get it to go away, I'll stop worrying that the good things in life are destined to fail, like you and me. But I'm up in this satellite dish, and I'm thinking: what if this is the voice that still believes things can be okay, that believes in good and warns me from bad? It wants to protect me, just like the United Nations.”

“I once failed, but i kept my head up and now i succeed”