“She snuggled back under the blanket with me, turned toward me so that she could rest her head on my chest. “I hear your heart,” she said.
“Do you check every once in a while, just to make sure I’m not undead?”

“He gave you to me," she said, so low I could hardly hear her. "Now I have to give you back to him, Mama.”

“At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken.”

“You really love her don't you," she said.
With all my heart."
She looked as sad as I'd ever seen her.
What's your heart telling you to do?"
I don't know."
Maybe", she said gently,"You're trying to hard to hear it.”

“She loved her teaching and she got frustrated when one of her students said, well, what do you expect, I’m just from Arkansas. She said, don’t tell me that, you’re as smart as anybody, you’ve just got to believe in yourself and work hard and set high goals. She believed that anybody could make it.”

“The moonlight shown upon her as she lay back in my bed.
It was the kind of scene I only had imagined in my head.
I just could not believe it, to think that she was real.
And as I tried to tell her she said "Shhh.. I know just how you feel.
And if you want to come here with me, then that's all right with me.
'Cause I've been oh so lonely, lovin' someone is a better way to be.
anywhere's a better way to be."”

“I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.”

“She started crying when she saw the busted colon I gave her pussy husband, so she took one of her shoes off and threw it at me. I caught the shoe between my pecs and I started to laugh like a pirate. Then she started walking towards me to take her shoe back, and there was no way I was going to let this bitch get near my chest so I body slammed her into a cactus that happened to be there. She got up and was uglier than before, so I did what I always do when women start to cry: I went back inside to play video games.”

“I'm almost there, almost to the barricade, when I thinks she hears me. Because for just a moment, she catches sight of me, her lips form my name.

And that's when the rest of the parachutes go off.”

“He touched her face, gently, with the back of his hand. 'you disappear so completely into your head sometimes.' he said. 'i wish i could follow you.'
you do, she wanted to say, you live in my head all the time”