“Be gentle with him, Mercy. He's got a heart as big as Texas— he'll die for you without blinking. But he doesn't expect anyone to do the same for him.”

“Thomas is ‘crazy as a sprayed roach’ when you make him mad, but he has a heart as big as Texas too.”

“You can't fall in love with a man for who he is, and then expect him to change. Just love him, and if he's worth his salt, he'll give you what you need and be the man you need him to be.”

“I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.”

“If a person has grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn't live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn't care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn't understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.”

“It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.”