“Alice Malloy had dark, stringy hair, and even her husband, who loved her more than he knew, was sometimes reminded by her lean face of a tenement doorway on a rainy day, for her countenance was long, vacant, and weakly lighted, a passage for the gentle transports and miseries of the poor.”

“Her fingertips reached to trace the damage, but he grasped her hand with his own. He leaned down, far enough that the dark ends of his hair brushed feather-light against her face, caught in her lashes.”

“Daniel's face-- the way it had been bathed in violet light when he'd carried her home this morning-- appeared before her eyes. His gleaming golden hair. His tender, knowing eyes. The way one touch of his lips transported her far away from any darkness. For him, she'd suffer all of this, and more.”

“No. No games. He wanted her and didn't care who knew it. He definitely and absolutely wanted her, longed for her, wanted to do more things than there were names for with her.”

“My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman.”

“She needed to hear the reminder, the reminder that there was more to this life than her heart. Even if it could never be mended completely. She had her soul. She had the Hereafter. She had her faith.”