“I'd had no idea what life or love was. Life didn't explode in the sunshine and pretty places. Life took the strongest root with a little bit of rain and a whole lot of shit for fertilizer. Although love could grow in times of peace, it temperred in battle.”

“Life didn't explode in the sunshine and pretty places. Life took the strongest root with a little bit of rain and with a whole lot of shit for fertilizer. Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle.”

“Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. Daddy told me once - when I'd said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was - that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they'd fought like hellions, crashed into each other like two giant stones. That eventually they'd eroded each other into the perfect fit, become a single wall, nestled into each other's curves and hollows, her strengths chinking his weaknesses, her weaknesses reinforced by his strengths.”

“Barrons had just given me the most carnal, sexually charged hungry look I'd ever seen in my life, and I was pretty sure he didn't even know he had done it.”

“A woman who’s lived in a cage all her life. And hates it. Bored in there, aren’t you. Waiting for life to happen. And when it finally does, it steals from you what you loved most. So take back. Explode. Lash out. Blow up”

“Life equaled love plus passion squared. Loving and being passionate about what one did was what made life so precious.”

“He would be, she now knew, a whole lot dominant in bed and a little bit dirty.-Gabrielle about Adam”