“She was in love. In love with the same man she'd always been in love with-God save her.”

“She had always thought that she wanted someone to love her beyond all reason. Someone who would slay a regiment of knights to save her the slightest inconvenience. She'd been wrong. That sort of fool left nothing but a swath of bloody knights in his wake.”

“She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.”

“She’d said she loved him. She'd put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.”

“Her house was the heavy (but not indefinitely heavy) and sturdy (but not everlasting) God that she'd loved and served and been sustained by.”

“It was a long time since whe's been young and it was unlikely that she'd ever been lovely. She stood like a man, square-on. Her breasts pushed out the old tee-shirt, but it was clear from the way she stood that she'd forgotten about breasts being sexy. Her breasts made bulges in her shirt, the same way her knees made bulges in her black track pants, that was all.”