“Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.”

“He's a drunken bum is what I'm talking about. And he might be a jailed one, too, if I report his hittin' me. Unless you want to add a little extra to the telephone money.”

“He's too much. Everything about him is too much. His emotions, his actions, his anger, his aggression.His love.”

“Let’s not talk about how I am. It’s a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore.”

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”

“Ramrod felt a great sadness building up, deep within. There were no words to express his feeling of loss. The sorrow rose up from the pit of his stomach and caught in his throat. He had a strangled ejaculation buried deep down in his soul. Yes, Ramrod missed his wife very, very much. He missed the warmth of her breasts pressed up against him in the night. He even missed her cold feet. And he especially missed her bedtime facial. Yes, it’s true—he missed her eyes, he missed her mouth. He had trouble remembering how she wore her hair the last time he saw her, and he missed that, too. It’s like, where Love was concerned, Ramrod’s aim wasn’t very good. Yes, life was becoming very, very hard on Ramrod. ”