“Doyou miss a parent you never knew?” he whispered.Kate considered his question for some time. His voice had held a hoarse urgency that told her there wassomething critical about her reply. Why, she couldn’t imagine, but something about her childhood clearlyrang a chord within his heart.“Yes,” she finally answered, “but not in the way you would think. You can’t really miss her, because youdidn’t know her, but there’s still a hole in your life—a big empty spot, and you know who was supposedto fit there, but you can’t remember her, and you don’t know what she was like, and so you don’t knowhow she would have filled that hole.” Her lips curved into asad sort of smile. “Does this make any sense?”Anthony nodded. “It makes a great deal of sense”

“Cash, you can’t have me, I’m not yours to have,” she told him, her voice now sounding a wee bit desperate. His mouth came back to hers and she felt that he was still smiling. “Oh yes, darling, you are,” he said there and he kissed her.”

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”

“Three years with Claudia had taught Ruso that when a woman said something did not matter and refused to tell you what it was, it usually mattered a great deal—to her, if not to you. Frequently her way of punishing you for not knowing what it was in the first place was to refuse to tell you until you gave up asking. This was her cue to accuse you of not caring about her, otherwise you would have known what she wanted you to know without having to be told. Finally, if you were lucky, she would explain the latest way in which you had failed her expectations. If you were not lucky, she would explain...”

“I don’t want Tiamat to go back,” said Jeremy sullenly. “I want her to stay here with me.”Miss Priest laughed. It was not a horrible laugh at all. “What a terrible idea!” she said. “Why do you want her to stay?”Because I love her. I don’t want to lose her.”Miss Priest reached out and took his chin in her hand. She looked into his eyes. “You silly boy,” she said. “Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people—they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.”

“You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don’t write that she can’t really control her property, that she can’t—doesn’t have any say over her children, that she can’t vote—if you don’t put that in it, then it’s a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That’s true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don’t realize that, it seems.”