“She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.”

“She often wondered indeed if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with anyone. She had an ideal of friendship as well as of several other sentiments, which it failed to seem to her in this case – it had not seemed to her in other cases – that the actual completely expressed.”

“Father, perfect my trust;
Let my spirit feel in death,
That her feet are firmly set
On the rock of a living faith!”

“[Rose, taken out for the evening by Pinkie] She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present – she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.”

“He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.”

“she is no longer
the beautiful woman
she was. she sends
photos of herself
sitting upon a rock
by the ocean
alone and damned.
I could have had
her once. I wonder
if she thinks I
could have
saved her?”

“She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.”

“Sweet little rock and roller, sweet little rock and roller
Her daddy don’t have to scold her, her mother can’t hardly hold her
She never gets any older, sweet little rock and roller”

“The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.”

“I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”