“No one was more stunned by the choice than her mother, who claimed to the saleswoman that she hadn't seen Danielle that dressed up since her first Communion.”

“Can there be anything more sad than a girl dying on the day of her first communion, in her new dress. A little bride of death...”

“It could not have been easy for Mother, an only child, to grow up without a father and with a mother who was remote. Photos of her as a child show her extremely dressed up --Cornie's beautiful little doll. But a daughter, unlike a doll, grows up, and might fall in love with and marry someone her mother does not like; she becomes an individual with her own ideas.”

“She looked at her own past, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn't beenher fault, but the faultof that insecure little boy, who had given up after the first attempt.”

“Pamela realizes for the first time in her life that she hadn't made the wrong choice at all. Nor had she made the right choice. She had simply made a choice. And somewhere along the way, she had lost the courage to live by it.”

“...the only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned.It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had melted together.This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul.”