“Homer Wells, listening to Big Dot Taft, felt like her voice – dulled. Wally was away, Candy was away, and the anatomy of a rabbit was, after Clara, no challenge; the migrants, whom he’d so eagerly anticipated, were just plain hard workers; life was just a job. He had grown up without noticing when? Was there nothing remarkable in the transition?”

“When he and Wally stopped laughing, Homer said, ‘I’ve never seen the ocean, you know.’‘Candy, did you hear that?’ Wally asked, but Candy had released herself with her brief laughter and she was sound asleep. ‘You’ve never seen the ocean?’ Wally asked Homer.‘That’s right,’ said Homer Wells.‘That’s not funny,’ said Wally seriously.‘Right,’ Homer said.A little later, Wally said, ‘You want to drive for a while?’‘I don’t know how to drive,’ Homer said.‘Really?’ Wally asked. And later still – it was almost midnight – Wally asked, ‘Uh, have you ever been with a girl – made love to one, you know?’ But Homer Wells had also felt released: he had laughed out loud with his new friends. The young but veteran insomniac had fallen asleep. Would Wally have been surprised to know that Homer hadn’t laughed out loud with friends before, either?”

“Candy felt helpless; no one seemed to understand why she was standing there. Children were colliding with her at hip level, and this awkward, darkly handsome young man, who was surely her own age but seemed somehow older…was she supposed to tell him why she’d come to St. Cloud’s? Couldn’t anyone tell by just looking at her? Then Homer Wells looked at her in that way; their eyes met. Candy thought that he had seen her many times before, that he’d watched her grow up, had seen her naked, had even observed the act responsible for the particular trouble she was now presenting for cure. It was shattering to Homer to recognize in the expression of the beautiful stranger he had fallen in love with something as familiar and pitiable as another unwanted pregnancy.”

“He felt the pregnant woman squeeze his hand so hard that it hurt. The word ‘Mother!’ was strangely on his lips when Nurse Angela finally got the door open and seized Homer Wells in her arms.‘Oh, oh!’ she cried. ‘Oh Homer – my Homer, our Homer! I knew you’d be back!’And because the pregnant woman’s hand still firmly held Homer’s hand – neither one of them felt able to let go – Nurse Angela turned and included the woman in her embrace. It seemed to Nurse Angela that this pregnant woman was just another orphan who belonged (like Homer Wells) exactly where she was.”

“The situation Larch was thinking of was war, the so-called war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn’t stay there. (‘I’m sorry, Homer,’ Larch imagined having to tell the boy. ‘I don’t want you to worry, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn’t stand up to a war.’) What Larch meant was that his own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells’s going to war.The love of Wilbur Larch for Homer Wells extended even to his tampering with history, a field wherein he was an admitted amateur, but it was nonetheless a field that he respected and also loved. (In an earlier entry in the file on Homer Wells – an entry that Dr. Larch removed, for it lent an incorrect tone of voice, or at least a tone of voice unusual for history – Dr. Larch had written: ‘I love nothing or no one as much as I love Homer Wells. Period.”

“Homer Wells was in Wally’s room, reading David Copperfield and thinking about Heaven – ‘…that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.’ I think I would prefer to love Candy here, ‘on earth,’ Homer Wells was thinking – when Olive interrupted them.”

“Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela’s empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch’s reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry – in order not to miss the bedtime story.”