“As teenagers, Marcus had been the muscle and Jake the brains. Marcus had beat up the kids who'd made fun of skinny Jake; Jake had convinced teachers not to punish him.Since then, Marcus had grown a brain (kind of) and Jake had developed muscles. But habits die hard.”

“You are the politest man I know, Jake Burnett." "Had politeness beat into me.”

“It was then, for the first time, that Will saw the kind of help Marcus needed. Fiona had given him the idea that Marcus was after a father figure, someone to guide him gently towards male adulthood, but that wasn't it at all: Marcus needed help to be a kid, not an adult.”

“Jake: I'm not offering up excuses of any kind... I was just saying that sometimes shit happens, and I don't have a choice.Natalie: No, Jake, that's where you're wrong. Me getting cancer? True enough, I had no choice. How you treat the ones you love? Well, there, you always have a choice.”

“Jake had never felt like such a fool for keeping a promise. He'd broken plenty of others he should have kept. Why had he kept one he should have broken?”

“THE SHARPSHOOTER AT GETTYSBURGAs he grew more and more parched, waiting near the Emmitsburg Road that reached up to Gettysburg, Jake thought of peaches and water, until he saw movement across the way, near a pile of wooden fence rails. Rebel skirmishers had been using those rails as cover all morning. Jake set the rear trigger of his Sharps. He prepared to barely caress its forward trigger, the hair trigger, as he waited for a chance to kill someone Jake knew, in all likelihood, was not so different from himself.”