“She seemed to soften at that, but then she asked, "Has anything really changed?"
"I've learned I need to consult you in matters, lest you decapitate me.”

“Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.”

“If I've learned anything in my life, it's that God has the habit of asking you to do the very thing you think you can't do.”

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?”

“Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.”

“You need anything else…

You to touch me like I matter…”

“As a matter of fact, she has refused to marry me.”
“So when's the wedding?” Ramsey asked.”

“You ask for her secret, though you might not know that's what you're about; and she can't tell you without learning it herself. And she wants not to learn that secret.”

“She said, "I wanna learn a love song full of happy things."
She said, "I wanna learn a love song; won't you let me hear you sing?"
She said, "I wanna learn a love song, I wanna hear you play."
She said, "I wanna learn a love song before you go away."”

“All I could do is lie there and think about how much her voice changed when she asked me if she was pretty, and how much she changed when I answered.”