“I believe every...man remembers the girl he thinks he should have married. She reappears to him in his lonely moments, or he sees her in the face of a young girl in the park, buying a snowball under an oak tree by the baseball diamond. But she belongs to back there, to somebody else, and that thought sometimes rends your heart in a way that you never share with anyone else.”

“He wants her in his bedroom. And not in that way — no girl has ever been in his bedroom that way. It is his private space, his sanctuary. But he wants Clary there. He wants her to see him, the reality of him, not the image he shows the world. He wants to lie down on the bed with her and have her curl into him. He wants to hold her as she breathes softly through the night; to see her as no one else sees her: vulnerable and asleep. To see her and to be seen.”

“But...Well, have you ever done this with anyone else?""Never." He pulls her down so that she is lying on the window seat."Good." Willow is surprised that shy as she indeed is, she isn't embarrassed to be naked in front of him. Maybe this is because in every other important way she had already been."Have you?" Guy lies down on his side next to her."No!""Good." He kisses her hair, her face, her neck.”

“Why did you say you believed me ?" In profile, he could see both the young woman she was becoming and the little girl he remembered. "Because I trust you.”

“Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman.”

“Did you hear about the lawsuit? Mary asked."No, what?""I hear that he is so big," she lifted her eyebrows to indicate what she meant, "that he put a girl in the hospital and she is suing him, because she can never have babies because of him.""Ewwwwwwwwwww!!!!" the sisters chorused."Could a guy really do that?" Lydia asked.Elizabeth shrugged. "I guess, but he would have to be the size of a friggin' oak tree.”