“Tory a father isn’t supposed to fear his fourteen-year-old daughter. That being sad, you terrify me.”

“One day Bird had approached his father with this question; he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a hundred years after I die? Father, what will happen to me when I die? Without a word, his young father had punched him in the mouth, broke two of his teeth and bloodied his face, and Bird forgot the fear of death.”

“And fourteen—fourteen is such a fearful age, when you find out so fast what you’re capable of being, but also what a toll the world expects.”

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

“While the sale of daughters was practiced in England for seven hundred years after the introduction of Christianity, we note that by the ancient law of India, a father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the smallest present therefor. In mediaeval England the daughter was held as a portion of the father property to be sold to the highest bidder.”

“People are afraid of you, Arty. Girls are terrified of you. You’re a fifteen-year-old in a bespoke suit, and nobody died.”

“You are your father's daughter,' he said, the skin around his eyes tightening. 'Trent is his father's son. Apart, you are annoying. Together… you have the potential to be a problem.”

“You go to him for advice? He’s only what? Five years old? I swear I own older sweaters. (Tory)”

“A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.”

“Everything is sad and ridiculous in old age. Even the fear of death.”