“Anytime I hear about another one of us gone berserk, shooting up his ex’s office or drowning her kids to free herself up for her Internet boyfriend, the question I always ask is not, like every other tongue-clucking pundit in the country, how could this have happened? but why doesn't this happen every day?”

“As Anne watched her, she could not help thinking of the age-old question every woman asks herself at some time or other: do I have to swallow it?”

“Books were her refuge. Having set herself to learn the Russian language, she read every Russian book she could find. But French was the language she preferred, and she read French books indiscriminately, picking up whatever her ladies-in-waiting happened to be reading. She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket.”

“[Todd] “There isn’t a woman I’m trying to impress with baking. I made that up.”Kate frowned, stilling in her efforts to free herself. “Why did you say that then?”“Damn it, to keep this from happening.” His head blocked out the light as it dipped, and then his mouth crashed down on hers.Shock ripped through her as his lips masterfully parted hers, his tongue plunging inside to taste her.”

“That’s just the kind of thing that kids do to each other. It’s no big deal. There’s always going to be a person laughing and somebody getting laughed at. It happens every day, in every school, in every town in America—probably in the world, for all I know. The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.”

“When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”