“I've had a splendid time," she concluded happily, "and I feel that it marks an epoch in my life. But the best of it all was the coming home.”

“I've cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them' she said. 'I suppose I'm too fastidious. all my life I've wanted somebody I could look up to, somebody great and big and splendid. Most men are so small.''What d;you mean by splendid?' Hewet asked. 'People are-nothing more.”

“The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us”

“Then my mother shocked me. She said, " All those things that you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things too." [She] showed me the handful of bullets she'd had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married (and she was happily married...) to my father. "You have to understand how little I was raised to expect that I desired in life, honey. Remember- I come from a different time and place... and you have to understand how much I love your father.”

“I wan to lie beside you and just listen to you breathe. When I've had a shitty day, I want to come home to you and lay my head in your lap and feel your hand on my face.”

“The mark of a good book is that you're happy to come home to it. The mark of a great book is that you occasionally schedule your life to stay home with it.”