“Years fly by, but the heart stays in the same place.”

“This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.”

“You have heart disease, people understand. When the brain gets sick, well, it’s almost impossible to comprehend.”

“Right now, even though he'd been dead for years, she wanted to collapse in her father's big arms and hear him tell her that everything would be all right. Do we ever outgrow that need?”

“In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "Our defense will be...?" He looked to Matt for the answer/"Blame the other guy," Matt said."Which other guy?""Yes.""Huh?""We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO, the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter-Combination, the accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim some of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that steamrolled.""Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his eyebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, nodded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded."We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks. The jury end up knowing something went wrong but you don't know where to place the blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible mistake, every uncrossed t and dotted i. We act like discrepancy is a huge deal, even if it's not. We are skeptical of EVERYONE.”

“I look at her, then at Tasha, and I feel the wondrous blend of bliss and fear. They--bliss and fear--are constant companions. Rarely does one venture out without the other.”

“The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.”