She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

We were two throats and one eye and we had no price.

I know it's trash: just another story made up to scare wicked females and correct unruly children. But it's all I have. I know I need something else. Something better. Like a story that shows how brazen women can take a good man down. I can hum to that.

She knew Paul D was adding something to her life—something she wanted to count on but was scared to... His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well—to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other—the things neither had word-shapes for—well, it would come in time.

Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe.

You always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses – young loving.

Tears streamed down his face and he cradled the barrel of the shotgun in his arms as though it were the woman he had been begging for, searching for, all his life. "Gimme hate, Lord," he whimpered. "I'll take hate any day . But don't give me love. I can't take no more love, Lord. I can't carry it. It's too heavy.