“What’s wrong with my clothing?' she asked, glancing down the length of her body, clothed in a tank top and shorts.He helped her up, unable to stifle a grin. 'Let’s just say women do not dress like that in 1863.”

“I agree. To me, it [galloping on horseback] is the essence of freedom—the power of the beast beneath you, the wind in your face, the thundering of the hooves. It is a great elixir for the soul.”“And does your soul need healing, Benjamin?” she asked quietly, gently running her fingertips across his bicep and down his forearm.He turned away from the view of the pond and looked at her with clear, blue eyes, his expression serious. He captured her fingers in the palm of his hand. “My healing started the day I met you. You are my elixir.”“Then perhaps you need another dose,” she whispered, her face upturned as she leaned closer to him.”

“Perhaps in body I am not quite as real as you,” he said, then looked alive, making him once again seem real, even though she knew that if she tried to touch him, she could not. “But my thoughts and emotions are as real as yours. My soul, Mia Randall, is as real as yours.”

“For me, the dying part wasn’t so horrible. I was only in pain for a few moments before death arrived. For me, the difficult part was having so many things that I had yet to experience, leaving behind people that I cared about. I wasn’t through living.”

“The rainy days in life are what make us treasure the sunny days.”

“...sometimes we can’t enjoy the bloom of a rose because we’re too busy crying over being pricked by the thorn.”

“I wasn’t sure where to go from here. From the outside it seemed so straightforward. Leave, run away, start again. Julia had a lot going for her. She could have a whole new life. It clearly isn’t this straightforward as there are thousands of women like Julia who don’t leave or run away or start again. I would never really understand the complexities of Julia’s violent relationship but one thing was very clear. When she said that Andy had nobody else, what she was really saying was that she didn’t have anyone else. She was alone and, however difficult and abusive her relationship was, she clearly felt that it was all she had.”