“After they stopped torturing him they locked him in the jail cell again and pretended they would forget him... Then, eventually, and unexpectedly, release. Into ignominy, oblivion, married life.”

“If I lost him here, to this idiotic fight, after I fought and guarded him for two weeks, after I cried and thought he was dying, I would find him in the afterlife and I would murder him again.”

“I'll never forget Jonah's face. A light poured out of him and became the spirit of the room, like a genie released from a bottle after centuries of darkness.”

“The Don looked around his cell, including the naked 30 year-old woman sprawled in his bed and steaming bowl of Mussels Marinara sitting in front of him. He was always famished after sex and couldn't envision a life on the outside that would limit all of the things he loved to do. In a way, being on the outside would be like going to jail for Don Vito.”

“Once, walking with him, Paola had stopped and asked him what he was thinking about, and the fact that she was the only person in the world he would not be embarrassed to tell just what it was he had been thinking about at that moment convinced him, though a thousand things had already done so, that this was the woman he wanted to marry, had to marry, would marry.”

“And what hurts him most is the gleam of peace he'd had: he would rather imagine his wife tortured in a secret cell than imagine that she chose to not love them anymore.”