“No amount of parental protectiveness could overcome the fact that she was very ready to be dazzled.”

“She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.”

“Nick turned out to be a shy boy, uncertain in groups and in new situations, but also very brave, determined to overcome his fear." - Will, as a parent describing his son”

“The very first thing I saw was his eyes, bluer and brighter than the sea itself. They gazed at me, so dazzling, and for an instant I couldn't even feel the pain. I was too overcome by the handsomeness of this sandy haired boy”

“She tried to ignore the fact that the dazzling, colourful world John had opened up for her had suddenly switched back to grey.”

“Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.”