“After all, Sergios was not all bad. He was tough, ruthless, arrogant and selfish, but while he might have the morals of an alley cat, he had been remarkably kind to her mother.”

“One Valentine's Day I woke up to find that my husband had laid a trail of red hearts from the bed and halfway around the house to my present. The gift was small because we didn't have much money but I was touched to the heart by the effort he had made to surprise and please me.”

“(On having being just proposed to)'Have you been thinking of this for long?' she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally.'Let's say it crept up on me,' he suggested lightly.That didn't sound very romantic. Muggers crept up on you; so did old age.”

“She released a small sigh at her own stubbornness. There was no greater fool than a woman who looked at a man and saw what he might be rather than what he actually was. But nothing died harder than a bad idea.”

“His mother is dead, yet she has never not been, in theory, at his shoulder. He wants her not to have known and suffered or even witnessed all the things that followed her death. Including all this now. But that would be like wishing her dead. Merely dead.”

“He ran his knuckles over her cheek as their gazes met and held. So much. He had been given so much.The sound of their daughters’ high-pitched laughter drew their gazes away from each other nd toward their children. The girls came running toward them, breathless and excited. Their hair was messed in tousled disarray, their gowns were smeared with dirt, their skin was flushed and rosy. They leaped onto the blanket, tumbling over each other like exuberant puppies as they wrapped their chubby arms about his neck. “Papa, Papa, we want a new game!”Morgan thought for a moment, overcome with a profound sense of gratitude.Of all he had been given, perhaps the most significant gift was a deep reverence for life, with all its pain and all its glory. Every loss had meaning. And every day was a newreason for celebration.”

“I am not Chewbacca. Me think Chewbacca jerk. He no can act. He ride Bigfoot coat tails. he think he cool, but he not. He phoney loser with no class. He all messed up on crack me think. People think me Chewbacca sometimes. No! Me have job. Bad wookie. Bad.”