“MOTHER: (looking at her daughter who will hang in the morning) My dear... such a thin pretty neck... (crying) It will snap like a twig.”

“This is a court of law! Not a court of truth!”

“I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn’t doing anything else and I didn’t want to look dumb, so I thought I’d pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good.”

“She inhaled a deep breath and prayed her mother wouldn't freak out. "I, um, met someone?" Also not exactly true, but she wasn't broaching the whole he's-an-ancientgod-who-came-to-life-through-my-snowman conversation. Not yet anyway. Maybe not ever.”

“He crowded right up into her space, pressed his body against hers—trapping her against the glass of the door behind her, plunged his hands into her hair until he was cupping the nape of her neck, and devoured her lips with his.”

“A man shouldn’t assume his wife was happy just because she didn’t complain all the time. She had complained this morning. He’d spanked her for it. That didn’t sit right somehow.”

“I feel emotionally conflicted. It's like when your mother in-law drives off a cliff in your new Porsche.”