“she could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?"the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear."it wasn't her" he mutters after a moment."sorry?" tom says."she didn't cry""then what?"it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower."i cried"luca bursts out laughing beside will."yeah, well i did" will says. "And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers.”

“I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it." But she's crying herself now. "He'd be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.”

“...I met a reverend mother once who cried...ah, it's all so sad' - 'What did she cry about?' - 'I don't know, after talking to me, I remember I said some silly thing like "the universe is a woman because it's round" but I think she cried because she was remembering her early days when she had a romance with some soldier who died, at least that's what they say, she was the greatest woman I ever saw, big blue eyes, big smart woman ... you could do that, get out of this awful mess and leave it all behind”

“Chamara. What is the word that comes closest to it? Soo-Ja wondered. To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? There is no other word for it, no way to translate it. It is not a word. It is a way to console yourself. He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she'll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.”

“I wanted to say that I was sorry, but not for the obvious. I was sorry that I had turned out to be such a big disappointment. Sorry that I couldn’t make things better. Sorry that everything I touched turned to crap. Seeing Mom cry had torn me up. Until finally she said something. “What happened to your hair? Did you do that?” At that moment, I hated Britney Spears.”

“Mom's crying a bit, quietly, the way she always does. She never utters a sound even when she's crying, and that makes me a little sad. Doesn't seem right. When you cry, people should hear you. The world should stop. I squeeze Mom's hand and she squeezes back. I don't say anything, but at least she knows I've heard her. (Going Bovine)”