“Silence is not just about secrecy, Your Majesty. It is grief and it is shame.”

“Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he's muffling it, but I can hear and I want someone to come over and jab her with a sedative because its pitch pierces my soul.”

“They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.”

“But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.”

“You go shake your foundations, Will. I think it's about time I saved myself.”

“What were you doing with her?" I ask quietly."Apart from questioning her about your whereabouts, I was listening to the most intriguing story about my life moonlighting as a kidnapper.”

“How would you like it if I said to you, 'It kills me to say this, but you're actually a tiny bit beautiful?" he had asked, pissed off. She hadn't said anything then, which was rare for her. "Would you have been lying?" She said after a long silence. "Lying about what?" More quiet. "About me being a tiny bit beautiful.""Shit, yeah."-But later that night, he had sent her a message on MSN. Of course I was lying. The "tiny" bit part, anyway.”