“Marry me,' he said. [...]'No,' she said. 'It scares me.' [...] 'What aspect of it scares you?' 'The loneliness.”

“But Iris walks through the project every day. Alice asked, "Isn't it dangerous?" Iris said, "I don't know. I guess it could be, if you're afraid. I'm not because it's just something I've always done. I mean, if you live in it you aren't scared of it.”

“They sounded frantic; he imagined them driven into the night by a force stronger than hunger or love, flying blind, scared stiff but having no choice in the matter.”

“That was one helpful thing he said to her, the first thing that caught her attention. "Start your life." Because she had assumed that her life was over.”

“Still, he's Emory. He doesn't have to walk her home, especially considering how snitty she was to him. He didn't have to come in and stop her cruelty to Fay, or watch over her as he has evidently been continuing to do, drawing those pictures on the Reeses' sidewalk. She knew the pictures were for her and her children. She and Emory did not always spell things out, but she knew, when he drew pictures, what they meant.”

“It dawned on him that the loneliness of marriage, the thing Alice had so feared, starts out of love itself, which can never deliver on its promises.”

“She knew what she looked like - someone at the edge of catastrophe, someone already flinching from a blow that had not yet been delivered.”