Quotes from book

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“That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.”

“We're both damaged property, I guess.
Plenty of time for renovation.”

“Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much.”

“Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind.”

“This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it.”

“We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again.”

“I'm nobody's child.
You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful.”

“You aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly.”

“Why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other peoples' beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our own questions. We think our questions are answers.”

“I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to.”

“Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?”

“Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know that you don't intend to believe it?”

“She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus.
Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me.”

“She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it.”

“I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts… And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else.”

“He was wild the way a mistreated dog becomes wild, not because it loves freedom, but because it has lost trust.”

“Good people can't out-think evil, 'cause evil think of things good folks can't think of. Can't enter your head what evil do.”

“You as stupid as they come. Of course, I say this with your best interests at heart. Most people are stupid. I don't hold it against them.”

“She never seemed to get near the edge. She lived on other people's edges. And when they fell off, she'd admire how pretty they looked as they fell.”