“I was taken up by books, as if by the strong arms of a parent I'd never known and had been badly missing.”

“If I had known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself!”

“Wish I had known what seemed so strong has been and gone.”

“For a moment, I wondered how different my life would have been had they been my parents, but I shook the thought away. I knew my father had done the best he could, and I had no regrets about the way I'd turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination. Because however it had happened, I'd somehow ended up eating shrimp in a dingy downtown shack with a girl that I already knew I'd never forget.”

“Even if they'd known that an attack had just been struck by one of their parents, they'd also have known that it wasn't their battle.”

“She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.”