“Early on, he'd learned to enjoy simple things, things that couldn't be bought, and he had a hard time understanding people who felt otherwise.”

“He'd [Cork] learned early not to invest a lot of emotion in thinking about the truth in a crime. As a cop, he'd gathered evidfence that had been used to guess at the truth, but in the end responsibility for assembling the pieces and nailing truth to the wall was in the hands of others - lawyers, judges, and juries. Truth became a democratic process, the will of twelve. He'd been burned when he cared too deeply. As a result, he'd trained himself to remain a little distant in his emotional involvement on a case. In the end, the outcome was out of his hands, and to allow himself to believe too strongly in the absoluteness of a thing he couldn't control was useless. He felt different now. Desperate in a way. This time he had to hold the truth in his own hands like a beating heart.”

“Human beings are made to forget things, otherwise they couldn't tolerate the pain of life. They say that time heals, but it's not time, it's some inner power all people have.”

“There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy this.”

“- It is clear that we have to come down a bit from the high horse of reason on which we enjoy sitting. We have to be simple and take time to think how to make things understandable to the little ones. We have to become children again, and some find that too hard.”

“The first time he'd held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.”