“(Mam) ignorant as a thistle, married to a drunk and pushing out baby after baby, each of which had to be clothed and fed until it grew up and left, or died.”

“Eventually everyone came out of the water and for hours and hours and hours we lay under the tree and talked and read and occasionally someone got up to throw a stick for the dogs and Piper played with Ding and made tiny woven wreaths of poppies and daisies to decorate his baby horns and Isaac whistled back and forth to a robin and Edmond just lay there smoking and telling me he loved me without saying anything out loud and if there ever was a more perfect day in the history of time it isn't one I've heard about.The sun waited to go down longer than usual that day so we kept putting off the moment we had to leave and the boys and dogs swam in the river again and eventually we all headed back practically in the dark, dog-tired and too happy to talk much.I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the world that night but it wasn't one that could touch us.”

“I shall bring him his tea and work myself to death by the time I am thirty bearing children and scrubbing floors and working in the fields digging turnips till my hands bleed and my back gives out and everyone urges me to keep on for just one more year, at which point I will die of exhaustion and the meagerness of my own life. I will love him and care for him, will never tell him to get his own tea, or sweep the ashes from the hearth or give birth to his own twelfth child himself.”

“The things that break your heart when you think there`s nothing left to break”

“On the warm stone walls, climbing roses were just coming into bloom and great twisted branches of honeysuckle and clematis wrestled each other as they tumbled up and over the top of the wall. Against another wall were white apple blossoms on branches cut into sharp crucifixes and forced to lie flat against the stone. Below, the huge frilled lips of giant tulips in shades of white and cream nodded in their beds. They were almost finished now, spread open too far, splayed, exposing obscene black centers. I've never had my own garden but I suddenly recognized something in the tangle of this one that wasn't beauty. Passion, maybe. And something else. Rage. ”

“The boy squirmed, long skinny legs wrapped round each other, rib-cage twisted ninety degrees from his hips in what appeared to be an impossible configuration of limbs. His elbows jutted out abruptly from his sides like some sort of drafting error and (independently aware of their awkwardness) his arms wound themselves round his torso like vines.”

“After all this time, I know exactly where I belong.”