“To the end of her life, to the last dream of old age, Syeira would always remember these two wild smells-the Arva horse, the muddy river-and how they carried her out of a lonely childhood.”

“I don't know what will happen with us," he said softly. "I can't predict the future. If things don't work out between us, yeah, there's a chance you'll hate my guts. To me, losing you as a friend is a pretty big risk. Do you think I'd take that big a risk for a few nights of sex?" He shook his head. "I was having freakin' nightmares about you with those other guys. What you were doing." He buried his face in her hair. "Kerri, I don't want you to see other guys. Just me.”

“You’re practically begging for it, aren’t you?” he murmured.“No.”His chuckle rasped over her senses. “I like begging, Reagan.”“I’m not going to beg.”He was silent for a moment, his fingers still playing, and she wondered if she’d said the wrong thing. Then he said softly, “Damn.”

“When you’re the father of a little boy, which involves many joys, you do have one rationalization in your back pocket that is ready to be used roughly half of the time – that your little boy has the disadvantage of not being a girl. Girls just seem to be ahead of the game in so many ways when they are little; they are not as apt to tumble spontaneously off stools as boys are. We saw this clearly illustrated the first day we took Dean to nursery school: the little girls took off their coats and hung them up, neatly, and then went to help all the little boys, whose coats were half off, or still zippered and hopelessly tangled around their midsections, or attached to one hand and dragging along the floor.”

“That's like saying Firefly's Mal was just Han Solo. He wasn't.”

“Many today view love and doctrine as enemies, or at best as rivals.”

“Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.”