“I had my knife in hand before I realized I'd reached for it and had kicked open the...front door before it ever occurred to me that it might have already been unlocked.”

“Staring up at me, hearing my tired voice, he reached out his tiny hand. He knew me, even though he had never seen me before. And I knew him. He was the love I'd been trying to express my whole life.”

“Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.”

“I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.”

“I slammed the door shut before we had a cold buffet in the front corridor. The shouts grew louder, denied their target. If I had better aim I'd have opened the door and tossed it all right back at them. But with my luck I'd hit the sleeping baby or an innocent old grandmother out for her morning constitution. And then we'd be dragged through the streets for certain. Dread uncurled in the pit of my stomach."Is that cabbage?" Colin asked, coming out of the dining room. Listening to the raised voices, he reached for the doorknob, frowning. I caught his hand. "Don't.""Whyever not?"I raised an eyebrow. "You'll get a rotted meat tart in the eye for your trouble,that's why.”

“I won the argument against the knife that night, but barely. I had some other good ideas around that time--about how jumping off a building or blowing my brains out with a gun might stop the suffering. but something about spending a night with a knife in my hand did it.The next morning I called my friend Susan as the sun came up, begged her to help me. I don't think a woman in the whole history of my family had ever done that before, had ever sat in the middle of the road like that and said, in the middle of her life, "I cannot walk another step further--somebody has to help me.”