Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass. Neither one had spoken a word.

Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart. She did not tell them to clean up their lives or go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glory bound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.

One by fire, one by water, two of what he had so intensely loved gone, he thought. He couldn't lose a third.

There really is no justice in a broken life!

There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

Sorrow makes us all children again.

And I go home having lost her love. And write this book.

My God, what have they done to you? This isn't a man, it's a broken kite.

There's a coffin in the back of the church as the wedding is going on ... Look, I'm a romantic. I like marriage...In the movies.

Somewhere deep within the tormented man there is a tormented child who feels doomed to torment others!

Settled on the carriage seat, Olivia drew in a deep breath, the first in what felt like five years. she knew it was wrong, what she was feeling. Because of widow of only a week shouldn't wish to dance a jig. But God help her, that's precisely what part of her wanted to do. Not on the grave of her recently deceased husband, of course-that would be considered rude. Just off to the side would suffice.

And she found the weight of grief at missing him eased somewhat by dwelling on what a blessing he'd been and how much poorer her life would be if she'd never known him.