“I felt exalted.It was my moment. This was my place and mytime and my own perfection.I was no longer afraid. Weird. If I'd had amouth I'd have smiled. I said.No one moved. I asked.No answer. I said, almost laughing.”

“I had everything I wanted in my hand. If I had to choose my eternity, I'd choose this moment, right now, with him. Because there's no place else I'd rather be.”

“It's just . . . I'd like you to find some nice guy with no weird fuckin' baggage."I had to laugh. My irritation vanished, and I reached over to pat his hand. "If you ever meet one," I said, "let me know.”

“I felt the pulse behind the fire raging now in my chest and realized that I'd found my heart again, just in time to wish I never had. To wish that I'd embraced the blackness while I'd still had the chance. I wanted to raise my arms and claw my chest open and rip the heart from it--anything to get rid of this toture. But I could't feel my arms, couldn't move one vanished finger.”

“And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”

“I'd long wondered if I were really a civilized person, though I kept striving to be one. I knew that at the moment I'd said I would take care of Lorena myself, I had meant it. There was something pretty savage inside me, and I'd always controlled it. My grandmother had not raised me to be a murderess.”