“There was nothing mean about his voice. In fact it was almost too nice. Like she was too dim to grasp whatever was so obvious to him. Which made her absolutely furious.”

“He had a feeling that somewhere in the course of her life something had happened to her, something terrible which in the end had given her a great understanding and clarity of mind. He knew, too, almost at once, on the day she had driven up to the door of the cottage, that she had made a discovery about life which he himself had made long since . . . that there is nothing of such force as the power of a person content merely to be himself, nothing so invincible as the power of simple honesty, nothing so successful as the life of one who runs alone. Somewhere she had learned all this. She was like a woman to whom nothing could ever again happen.”

“Sometimes I think all I want to find is a mean guy and make him be nice to me. Or maybe a nice guy who's a little bit mean to me. But they're usually too nice too soon or too mean too long.”

“She almost never said his name. Because it made the dreams too real. Because it made the loneliness too tangible when she woke up.”

“His mouth was wet and hot and intensely demanding, so sharp and piercing with need that it broke through Mattie’s defenses the way nothing else could have. A burst of excruciating hunger made her almost frantic with wanting him. She shifted in his arms and met his kiss wide open, giving as furiously as she took.“Oh, Mattie,” he said against her mouth. “I’ve never wanted a woman in my life like I want you. You’re driving me crazy.”

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”