“That made love—not grace—the magic ingredient. Then anew thought hit her. Perhaps love was grace. A shiver wentup her spine. What did that make anger? The antithesis ofgrace?”

“She did not want to know what charmhe had used to make her love him so deeply. She did not want to know it wasn’t real.”

“What stories these are, what lessons they teach us. That the redemption of mankind comes through woman, for she takes man's seed, nurtures it within her, and brings it forth into the world. That love is often a quest, to be earned and deserved before it is given. That love can be lusty and earthy, as well as emotional and spiritual... .But above all that love is forever.”

“Shay," she said. "Shay McKenna," as if trying out his name, saying it for the first time. "Did you ever love me, even a little?"Love you?" He turned his head and brushed his lips across her fingers. "I'm loving you now, mo chridh. After I'm dead, a thousand years from now, whatever's left of me, be it a soul or just a handful of dust, that will be loving you.”

“Behind and byond her looks,her manner, there had been some dark malaise. But nobody ever saw it, back then, he thought. All you saw was her face.”

“I wish he was mine," he said. The words slipped out without thought, but there was no taking them back..."I love Gus," she said, cutting him deep, deep. "Not only is he my husband, but he is honorable and noble and good, and I vowed before God that I would love him." She made a harsh tearing sound in her throat. "When I saw him that day, when he knocked me over with his bicycle, he was like something out of a dream, my dream." She looked at him, and her eyes glittered like shards of glass. "Oh, God, God, how could I have known, how could I have known? Up until that moment, you see, he was the closest thing I'd found to you.”

“Even her footsteps did not seem to belong to her. The night seized and transformed them, just as it transformed the greenhouses they passed from useful places for growing things into cold night palaces.”