“Had he healed one wound only to open another?”

“Was there to be some healing after all?Was healing possible when grave damage had been done?Was wholeness possible when one had been horribly maimed.”

“Everyone had run to do her bidding. Soon only the three men--the three useless ones--had been left in the sitting room to fight terror and nausea and fits of the vapors.The door opened. Three pale, terrified faces turned toward it.-the three manly men waiting during a childbirth”

“But he was not Matthew. He was everything that Matthew was not. He was safety and comfort and warmth. He was home. He was everything in the world that was hope and sunshine. He took a step toward her and opened his arms to her, and she was in those arms without ever knowing how the distance between them had closed.”

“But a mother-son relationship is not a coequal one, is it? He is lonely with only you just as you are lonely with only him.”

“Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift. He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic. He was not, though.He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still - and always - safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business. For receiving meant opening up the heart again.Perhaps to rejection.Or disillusionment.Or pain.Or even heart break.It was all terribly risky.And all terribly necessary.And of course, there was the whole issue of trust...”

“I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise.”