You seem to think I’m ashamed of you and that I don’t love you. In that you are dead wrong... You are my firstborn, my only son, my flesh and blood. I loved you, son, from the first minute I heard your baby’s cry. And I’ve loved you every minute since. You think you haven’t been the boy that I wanted... Well, I know I ain’t been the father you you wanted neither. But please son, wherever you go, whatever you do, please know that I love you and that I always have and that I always will.

I know I ain’t smart, Miss Althea. I don’t pretend to be. It’s something a feller can’t lie about. But I can get you game. I can keep ups this farm. And I care about your boy. I care about him a lot. But I’d never get between the two of you. Miss Althea, if you’ll marry up with me, I promise to listen to you in the things I don’t know about. Work for you ’til my back is broke and my fingers is down to the bone. And love and care for you until the day I die.

Just because we’re living in the stickes doesn’t mean we have to look like we belong here.

Whenever you turn around, I’ll be watching and waiting for you.

I’ll tell you a secret about the men in this world. They like young pretty girls, but when pretty teams up with smart and resourceful, it’s more than an elixir, it’s nearly a dad-blamed aphrodisiac.

Piney woke up wearing a big grin on his face. He couldn’t remember when he’d slept so well. He pulled the pillow next to him up over his face. He could smell her hair on it.“Jesse,” he murmured to himself. He liked her. He really liked her. And he loved, loved, loved doing her.Being inside her. She was so hot. She was so tight. She was…Piney stopped himself in midthought and rolled out of bed. His mind was headed where his body could not go.

He, the stranger, was speaking to her brother Jesse. The sun was at his back and it shone around him like a golden halo. Even from the distance she could see that he was handsome in a curious way. He was finely dressed and worthily shod. Real pince-nez spectacles of circular glass were perched upon his nose. And his trim form and deignful expression gave him a princely air.Meggie's eyes widened. Her heart beat faster and the blood sped through her veins.A prince. Her prince.

Accepting the world’s realities, even when you didn’t understand them, was a basic necessity of existence in Ozark life.

It was Laney and me against the world. We were a powerful pair that summer. Nobody could ever come between us.

She was Grandma Will. That term felt foreign and unfitting to the relationship they had. She wondered if her father had ever called her Mother, Ma, Mom, Mama? Maybe in private he might have, but to the world, all the world, it was Aunt Will.