“She prays to God most every night
And though she swears he doesn't listen there's a little hope in her he might.”

“But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.”

“She would tell him what she wanted in her life--her hopes and dreams for the future--and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true. And the way he said it made her believe him, and she knew how much he meant to her.”

“She waits for me at night, she waits for me in silence.
She gives me all her tenderness and takes away my pain.
And so far she hasn't run, though I swear she's had her moments.
She still believes in miracles while others cry in vain.”

“Aaron was uncomfortable and a little afraid. This, he thought, is how God might pray to his God.”

“She's gonna listen to her heart.
It's gonna tell her what to do.
She might need a lot of loving,
But she don't need you.”

“The hope that she might regain her happiness made her fearless.”

“This refusal to listen was a form of stupidity that Martha especially abhorred, and she considered Miles well punished for it. If he had ever taken seriously her passionate desire to leave him, she might not (she now believed) have been driven in practice to show him how little indeed he knew. To pay attention, for Martha, was the prime human virtue; without it, there could be no dignity and no reciprocity.”

“At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind.”

“She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.”