“I can't drive."
"I'm going to teach you," he'd said confidently.
At the end of the lesson, he'd declared her the most aggressive and dangerous driver he'd ever encountered.
Which meant… number one! (Sabine)”

“One of the most difficult things he'd ever done was turn away and leave her standing in the shadows.”

“If she could have anything in the world, he'd asked her, what would it be?

She'd answered that one without hesitation: a best friend. She hastily added, He'd smiled faintly. he'd thought but not said.”

“[Mr Johnson] "You know what a Tory is – one who wants to drive the working men as he'd drive cattle."”

“He'd always been a man who followed his head and not his heart. The heart was just a bloody motor. The head was meant to drive”

“Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years of his life.”

“Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful.”

“He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone.”

“If he'd learned one thing while he'd been away, it was that loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex or politics or religion. Or even failure. Loneliness is what clears out a room.”

“And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.”