"Night in the desert is otherworldly, preternatural."
"But every violent ending has to begin somewhere."
"The memory of it all brought a surge of rage over something I’d once thought of as love. Until I knew it was the opposite."
"Worse, I hadn’t learned a thing about who not to trust."
"The truth was too humiliating. I worried more about what those bruises said about me than what they said about Devin."
"Dreams were the place that made you and the place you hated most."
"I wasn’t at all the confident, successful woman I’d planned to be. I was a weak-willed girl."
"It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see."
"Everyone should have one chance to remake themselves."
"You’ve got to drive an awful long time to get from end to end."
"The silence between us was painfully awkward."
"But just then, beaten and quietly praying to something I didn’t think existed past the glittering stars, it seemed there was no other surface of the earth quite as bleak."
"Sometimes they are a threat." She paused and pointed to my arm. "Kind of like those guys."
"I’ve spent a lot of hours wishing you’d get your testicles mauled by a rabid squirrel."
"It’s just the mechanics have changed a little."
"There are a million mysteries wrapped up in every heart. It would be foolish to believe they can be easily sorted."
"It’s a curious symbiosis between the town and the nearby prison, which was overwhelmingly the largest employer in the area."
"You want to understand today, you have to search yesterday."
"If you found even a few people to cling to in this sorry mess of a world then you were terrifically lucky."
"Take whatever garbage threatened to overwhelm you and bury it in a place too deep to touch."
"Because there's no such thing as justice. Or fairness."
"I've had this habit since I was a kid, of searching for the Three Kings."
"I'm going to fuck you good as you deserve and this'll be one hell of a night. Just trust me."
"It's a power which called to the animal in me but I waited until she'd gotten all of hers before I bent her over and filled that soft body again."
"I want to fuck you senseless every night and wake up with you every morning. If that's what a boyfriend does then I'm all over it."
"You may as well hear it. I've never been that kind of guy before."
"There's things I want to do to you that you probably never even heard of."
"I've been wanting to be inside you so much. It's been fucking killing me."
"You're not just a way to pass the time. You're the first girl I've wanted to wake up with, to hold in my arms afterwards instead of hurdling out of bed to get to the next episode."
"I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you, beautiful girl."
"This is good," he nodded. "The two of you are all kinds of cute together. I mean that."
"It’s amazing, I thought, how different the world looked when you could see the love in it."
"Hey," I tilted her chin up, "nothin’ to be sorry for, babe. Just know that when I touch you, every goddamn time I touch you, it’ll never end badly."
"There must be a reason why you hang out on the roof of an art museum. You ever consider doing anything with your talent?"
"She had a stack of old art books, too. Well, she did until Benton got pissed for nothing and shoved them into the backyard fire pit."
"The Persistence of Memory," Saylor said. "Salvador Dali."
"Doesn’t seem like a wise thing to spend money on."
"And if I was the manly type I might argue that I actually have an opinion about all this."
"Good. Need you to be wet and ready when we get home."
"He’s doing a pretty good job so far," Saylor glanced at me, blushing.
"For a big guy you sure have a low pain threshold."
"It’s just…For a smart guy, Chase is missing a few kernels of wisdom. The fight or flight sense that’s gotten me out of trouble more than once? He doesn’t have it."
"It’ll be okay," I told him, trying to pull him close. He gave me a look of sharp incredulity. "How the hell do you know that?"
"Whatever soft words the doctor uttered made his shoulders slump in a heartbreaking way."
"I wanted to reach out to her. I wanted to tell her it was going to be okay."
"The severity of the beating he took could easily have resulted in far worse injuries."
"I gathered Cord’s powerful body in my arms as best I could and ignored the attention we were beginning to attract."
"My fists clenched as I struggled with the itch to make someone bleed for the cowardly attack on my brother."
"Surgery? I finally asked in a gentle voice when we reached a room filled with comfortable chairs and a scattered collection of grim-faced people."
"The best outcome was a draw. And in the end there was only us."
"We were born on opposite sides of an invisible line and had been told our kind would never find peace with one another."
"Cordero and Creedence Gentry sank to the floor together and cried."
"This isn’t ‘goodbye’. It’s just ‘good night’. Now come here and kiss me, baby."
"I can’t fucking lose her. Please don’t let me lose her."
"You think that will help him recover? What do you think it will do to me?"
"I’m trying to understand today, you have to search yesterday."
"It means there’s no getting away from your past."
"You’re going to throw away everything. Saylor. Me. Yourself. For what, Cordero? What will you get out of it?"