“When you give up,' said a slim older man whose home we rebuilt, 'you might as well lay down and die.' It was obvious that we weren't just giving people back their homes, but also restoring a sense of dignity.”

“You should fight like hell if you get attacked on the street, or in your home. The old thinking was, especially with women, submit, give in, maybe the guy will give you abreak and not kill you. Now, maybe you will get raped, butleast you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn'tjust lie down and take it. You don't know how many home-invasion scenes we walk in on where the people are sitting there all tied up and all dead. There'll be four, five people, a family, mayb...more "You should fight like hell if you get attacked on the street, or in your home. The old thinking was, especially with women, submit, give in, maybe the guy will give you abreak and not kill you. Now, maybe you will get raped, butleast you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn'tjust lie down and take it. You don't know how many home-invasion scenes we walk in on where the people are sitting there all tied up and all dead. There'll be four, five people, a family, maybe some guests: enough to put up a fight. And you know they let themselves get tied up. You just know the guys said, 'We just want to tie you up. We won't hurt you.' You'd think the people would realize — why do they want to tie us up if they don't want to hurt us? But they bought it. It always gives us a little chuckle.”

“I don’t have home without him”, Carrie said when doctor asked her to go home.“I won’t give up on him. Do you hear me, Doctor? Don’t you give up on him!”

“You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart, and you weren't quite ready to give up on him yet.”

“Win," Leo said, "you'll burn the house down, just after it's been rebuilt. Give me the bloody matchbox."She shook her head resolutely.Are we starting a new springtime ritual?" Leo demanded. "The annual burning-of-the-manse?" Come to your senses, Win.”

“That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.”