“She was grinning and she should have been pretty when she grinned. She had good white teeth and a lovely, delicate mouth. But something always went wrong with Denise's smile. There was always something manic in it.”

“As though all the world were a bad joke and she was the only one around who knew the punchline.”

“Black coffee’s a lot like whiskey, you know? All devil and no trimmin’s. Always liked my sins pure and take it as it comes.”

“The dialogue is solo now. I don’t talk. No matter who’s in bed with me I never do. My thoughts slip off into nightmares sometimes but I don’t share them. I have become now what I only began to be then—completely self-protective.”

“pain can work form the outside in.”

“Lily kept her smile. She knew a little something about loss and what it was all about in the end. She searched for her answers in those items left behind.”

“Her white skin and those dark brown eyes and the way she always smiled at the world - always, it seemed - as if her face had been designed that way. The smile never went away.”