“Were kisses all the joys in bed,/One woman would another wed.”

“she kissed him with all the aching longing that being this close to him evoked; she kissed him in all the ways he had ever kissed her, feeling faint with joy when he began to kiss her back, his mouth moving with fierce tenderness, then opening with fiery demand over hers, until their breaths were mingled gasps, and they were straining to one another.”

“I place us where we are a happy couple who are madly in love, and we are kissing the way people kiss on their wedding day. With joy and relief and love. Without guilt. Without Shame.”

“If friendship were a matter of bookkeeping -- so much joy in one column, so much sorrow in the other -- everything would cancel out and you would, it seems, be left with nothing. Yet there must be another factor in the equation, for somehow the joy outweighs the sorrow.”

“What kind of wedding would you like?" he asked, and stole another kiss before she could reply."The kind that turns you into my husband." She touched the firm line of his mouth with her fingers. "What kind would you like?"He smiled ruefully. "A fast one.”

“Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.”