“and then he wanted to say he was sorry, but just that sometimes he felt understandable and sometimes he worried when they bickered and she went a while without saying she loved him, but he restrained himself.”

“I know he's a good person. And he said he was sorry. And I love him. And when you love a person, you have to forgive him sometimes.”

“My father gave me a ruined boy to compensate for the fact that he does not love me. The boy is fragile, broken—broke himself—broke everything.I asked him why he did it. He said because the world was unlivable. He said it was unlovable, but I think he meant himself. I think he meant that loneliness is sometimes painful.I curl against him, tuck my head beneath his chin and listen to his heart. It says stay and wait. It says regret. He knows what it is to want love, a love so fierce you grow roots. I hear his heart say please. He went looking for angels and found me instead, girl of the sorrows, sad but not sorry. I waited for a sign, a star to fall. He reached for a knife and drew branches.”

“She watched him, her head angled. He sometimes felt that she looked at him the way a cat regards a mouse. He just wondered how long it would take for her to pounce.”

“She understands enough of what is going on. She understands that he wants to save her, more than anything in the world. She understands what he understands, that if only he could save her, he could save himself. She understands also that she loves him, and as she stays inside his helpless stare, she knows that fate is something she has to steer herself.”

“What should one do? If Ruth had any better luck with him I would have thought that he simply had to attach himself to antifatherly gods until he proved himself a man in his own terms...She followed him to the bottom of his burrow, trying to understand, she forgave him incessantly, she was the pacifying force when he and I clashed. And he went out of his way to treat her with even greater impatience and contempt than he treated me. His wretched treatment of his mother was one of the commonest sources of our quarrels. Sometimes I wondered if he didn't abuse her because she tended to take his side - he wanted no mediator between us.”