“We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.”

“It's a very brave thing for anyone to do, offering love to another person. We make ourselves so vulnerable when we do it, don't we? We give that other person such power to hurt us and to rob us of our dignity. No one should ever belittle that gift, nor the giver.”

“Still, despite the satisfaction of their surface lives, Cora Grovians share in full measure the pain that is the basis of all human misery: the fact that we can never be as important to anyone else as we are to ourselves.There simply is never enough love.”

“It doesn't have to be logical, it doesn't have to be love in the usual sense. It doesn't even have to be long lasting. Usually it isn't. But whatever it is, it is real and powerful while it lasts, and there's no point denying it.”

“Don't threaten me with your death, Mother. God doesn't want you, and the Devil won't have you. Doesn't want the competition.”

“It's never nice to admit we don't know our friends as well as we thought we did.”

“You was the onlyest person that looked past my skin and past my meanness and saw that there was somebody on the inside worth savin...We all has more in common than we think. You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life.”