"The woman was insane. And God, she'd touched him. She'd reached right out and grabbed his hand, as if that were normal for him, as if it had been eight minutes rather than eight months since a woman's skin had come in contact with his own."

"He knew better than anyone that you could not trust a woman who said she was telling the truth. But what if you knew, from the start, the she was lying?

"All of us have got our ghosts."

"It was these small kindnesses that would break him. He could feel the fissures beginning even now, the hard shell he'd promised to keep in place so that no one, ever, would get close enough to hurt him again."

"She knew what it was like to hit rock bottom and to need someone to give you a leg up. She was doing this because she understood how a world jammed with phones and e-mail and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone."

"Words, he knew, could scar."

"It takes more strength to change someone else's life that it takes to change your own."

"Do you think that I don't know that I haven't slept in three nights? Or that we don't have enough kitchen staff? A man that I... that I thought I could love was arrested right in front of me for rape. And I can't tell you if he did or not. That's what I'm thinking about, not whether the goddamned dishes get washed or if I've dropped an order all over the floor. I am trying to make everyone happy. For God's sake, what do all you people want from me?"

"All these years I've watched you sneak out to drink, and I pretended I didn't see. All these times I've understood that sometimes a person needs to do something, and the hell with all the consequences."

"Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?"

"After a certain point, a heart with so many stress fractures would never be anything but broken."

"After a certain point, a heart with so many stress fractures would never be anything but broken."

"When it's all over, you're remembered for what you did, not what you said you were going to do."

"Sometimes we don't have a choice about what life throws us. And right now, it's throwing you a spatula."

"A very wise man once told me that you can't look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future."

"I would do it all over again. The conviction, the jail, the arrest-all of it-if that was the only way I'd get to meet you."

"He knew better than anyone that the best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow."

"Love's like that. Once you five it, even by accident, you're on the list forever."

"There's something about you... like you're a lighthouse, and other people see the beam. Or an anchor, with the rest of us just hanging onto you for dear life. You ground us."

"Have you ever really held the hand of someone you love? Not just in passing, a loose link between you-but truly clasped, with the pulses of your wrists beating together and your fingers mapping the knuckles and nails like a cartographer learning a country by heart?"