“When I find my consort, I plan to stab him in the heart before he can cause me a moment's unease. -Taliyah”

“When my whole body is pushed against his, I wrap my legs around his waist, forcing him to carry me the way my heart had been carrying HIM since the moment he saw me.”

“I couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hear my heart beating.”

“Doggone, I never thought I’d lose my mind.” I was startled at the time to realize this – that he had thought about it. But now that he is dead…it’s my turn to think of it – of death – and I do. I wonder how it will come to me. And when I do, I remember this moment; when my father seemed to be getting the news about his fate, about how it would b e for him, when he took it in and accepted it and was, somehow, interested in it, all at the same time, before my eyes. It was a moment as characteristic of him as any I can think of in his life, and as brave. Noble, really, I’ve come to feel.”

“I thought I was over him! So why did my heart still rip? Why did I still feel this sorrow? I got this strange sensation that God was with me. And he was angry. He was very angry--not at me and not at Jack. God was angry at the pain I was going through. I wondered if that was why God hated sin, because of the destruction it caused. For a moment I felt awe for a God who loved me enough to hate the things that hurt me without hating me for causing them.”

“Yes,yes I did. I told them to come in and make themselves at home and while they were at it, to immobilize me and stab me straight through the heart 'cause I'm just that effing bored." (Sam)”