“When I returned, I never once walked past the house where my mother, aunt, and I lved together...It was as if the past would judge me. The house would judge me. That merely looking at it would somehow cause me to calibrate my life, and in all aspects of usefulness I would come up short.”

“Anyway, who in their right mind would ever say a person was supposed to be happy? In your life happiness is either cut to your length or isn't.”

“An I must drink sour ale, I must, but never have I yielded to a man before, and that without would or mark upon my body. Nor, when I bethink me, will I yield now.”

“I knew that, when needed, mountains would move for me.”

“Judging from the unfamiliar number, I assumed the text came from Shannon. If not, I would see who came by my house at 4:30 and go with it. Maybe it would be Mr. Darcy coming to pick me up in an extravagant horse-drawn carriage, but I couldn’t picture Mr. Darcy using a cell phone.”

“I could not begin to mourn Deborah or my mind would ride off with me. There was nothing so delicate in all the world as one's last touch of control.”

“IfIf your hand came, dead in the dead of night,And touched my forehead, waking me to seeYou standing dead there in the dead of night,I who fear ghosts would have no fear at all.I'd greet you with the tenderest helloAnd you would smile, though sad. And then you'd go.There would be nothing deathly in your deathFor your love always was the laughing sortThat quickened life and would not die with death.And when you'd gone, I would not want to weep -- That loving gaiety would still be thereFilling with its own peace the quickened air.”