“The sting of her abandonment had not lessened through the years, and I suspected it would never go away. Occasionally, I could see agony in her eyes, the shadows that flickered in the background. If I could, I'd take her pain and make it my own. I'd swallow it like a bitter pill and live with the consequences.”

“She had never been to college, and I often wondered where her life would have led under different circumstances. She might have been a physician or an attorney, a CEO or a professor. Instead, she was stuck in Silvington, Indiana, married to a construction worker, and trying anything she could think of to save her child.”

“If I could slam the door, I would. If I could walk to another room, I would. The best I can do is turn and head for the far corner of my cell. In prison, even goodbyes are beyond my control.”

“I could quote enough Nietzsche to bore someone into a coma, solve mathematical problems so beautiful they'd make Pythagoras cry; I could talk so much bullshit the listener didn't know if I was coming or going, but I had gotten to know Rickie well enough to realize that I had no idea how a woman's mind worked.”

“She didn't want me; she wanted all of me. I didn't mind saying it. My girlfriend scared the crap out of me.”

“Truth may start out timid, but it finishes bold.”

“He had never thought in his wildest imagination of marriage as an option forhim. Never believed there was a woman out there that would make him sign up for that particular brand of madness. And, in the abstract at least, it still sounded like madness but this wasn’t about marriage, it was about Riley. With her, he knew that boyfriend-girlfriend shit wasn’t going to be enough. He had to have her locked down.”