“But you," "Sixteen is perfect. You can spend the rest of your lives together. He won't have to be alone.”

“Someday I'll tell you all of it," I say."I'd like that," he says."No," I say. "I promise you won't.”

“Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.”

“I wanted to be rid of him," he says. He raises my chin with his thumb. "But not if it meant being rid of you. I climbed in beside you, and you put your head in my lap. You can't think I would have left you like that.""Look what it got you," I say."Tea in bed and you here in front of me," he says. "It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.”

“I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.”

“Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.”

“His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try.”