“I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself.”

“How did you know what's been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate people when I don't want to hate... Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you--except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize. You mean, you want to hear? You want to know what I do and why I do it, you want to know what I think? It's not boring to you? It's important?”

“As long as you're around, your life is too. So just as you shower love and affection and attention on the husbands, wives, parents, children and forever friends who sorround you, you have to do so equally with your life, because it's yours, it's you, and it's always there rooting for you, cheering you on, even when you feel like you can't do it. I gave up on my life for a while, but what I've learned is that even when that happens and especially when that happens, life never gives up on you.”

“Lily, I have known you all my life, and I have watched you grow up from my sister’s annoying best friend who followed me around everywhere I went into the woman who I love with all my heart and all my soul. You are my best friend, my soul mate and the wife that I will love and cherish for the rest of my days. You are my every heart beat and the reason that I breathe. I love you. I love you forever. I love you beyond forever.”

“I've been trying not to think about the things I wanted but couldn't have.I figured life must be about what you can't have.Some part of me has given up wanting anything. Why? I'm human, aren't I?Even though I knew that this was pointless.Why did I fall in love?”

“Kiera Michelle Allen, my life was empty before you stepped into it. I thought I had everything I needed, but only because I didn’t let myself want anything. And then I saw you, and you burned a hole straight through me. I have never wanted anything more in my life. And I have never been more terrified in all my life. In all my life,” he repeated.…”And then, beyond some miracle that I’ll never understand, I got to keep you, and now…I’m only just beginning to understand what it means to truly want something. Because I want so much now. I want to make you happy. I want to give you the world. I want you to be proud of me. I want to comfort you. I want you to comfort me. I want to hold you when you’re scared. I want you to hold me when I’m scared. I want to make you laugh. I want to make you blush.” Leaning in, he whispered, “I want to make you scream.”…”I want to give you a home. I want to fill it with children. I want to take care of you. I want to grow old with you. I want you by my side, every day.” … “I just want you. Do you want me too?”