“I knew how good love could be -- I knew it was the best thing I'd ever done in my life -- and yet here I was alone. I was taking chances with my life. I kept telling everybody that I was all right, but I wasn't.”

“For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget.”

“I knew I wasn't second best for Tim (just as I knew that in real life, Jolene's flaming locks and eyes of emerald green stood no change against the aces of spades that was Dolly Parton's chest), but it took some believing, because I'd been second best to my sister for most of my life. That shakes your faith in yourself.”

“Yeah, I knew," he finally said, his voice soft. "I always knew I'd do whatever it took. Living in a trailer park, running in a pack of barefoot kids . . . my whole life was already set out for me, and I sure as hell didn't like the looks of it. So I always knew I'd take my chance when I got it. And if it didn't come, I'd make something happen.”

“I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.”

“I'd more than missed him, I needed him. It wasn't a dependency, it wasn't a weakness or a failure, he was an addition to my very soul. And I laughed into our kiss as I realized that this was what love was. I could live without him, of course I could, and I could function and get on with my days if he wasn't here, but I didn't want to. I wanted him right where he was, in my space and in my life.”