Quotes from Luanne Rice

Parents die far from home, and they take their things with them. The things that might give their kids comfort or solace or even an answer or two. Not that things were enough, but they were something to hold on to. Objects to hold and examine, reminders of someone who had once loved you. And sometimes they were all you had.

You're having what Saint John of the Cross would call 'a dark night of the soul,'" Aunt Aida said. "Follow it through, darling. Try to abide with the feelings, and know that you're being shown something you've never seen before. Have faith that morning will come.

Murder didn't just take one life; it stole the essence, will, and ease from everyone it touched. It took their old lives and left them to make their way in a completely new and uncertain world.

She couldn't make someone—Jonathan—understand what she was going through if he wasn't ready to understand.

The smart, ambitious woman he'd fallen in love with had slipped under the weight of his dark moods. She didn't like who she was becoming—quick to please him just to stop his anger, less likely to listen to herself than to him.

Her favorite patch was the least showy: the herb garden. A raised stone circle, no bigger than a beach umbrella, was filled with rosemary, sage, wild thyme, mint, lemon verbena, lavender, and burnet.

God steers, but you row.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. —ALBERT CAMUS

When a mother loves her child as much as yours loved you, she might find it impossible to let go, to leave you, if you were sitting right there. She had to wait for you to go away before she could die.

She's so anxious about being loved, she ends up driving people away.

He had felt earthbound by guilt, fear, and grief, but right now he felt the stirrings of something unexpected and long forgotten. Something like hope.

How couldn't he understand what happened, how death could make one person take to bed and another person sit on a rock

There is power in dangerous love. You can be so focused on the forbidden nature of it, justifying your choices to the world—me falling in love with Griffin while still legally married to Nate, Griffin giving me all his attention instead of trying to find a workable custody agreement with Margot, instead of doting on his devastated sons—that you miss the fact you're completely wrong for each other.

I used to escape into books. I'd hear my father yelling, and I'd open my book and dive in. I don't know what I would have done without reading.

People that sick simply can't love. They don't have it in them.

Conor. "Yeah?" "This is my case," she said. "And you've got a missing woman to find, so I'm wondering why you're hanging around the boatyard with me." "I miss you, Jen," he said. "I never see you

Not everyone glimpses paradise during their lifetime. Only the lucky ones.

Work?" Sixtus asked.

You can think you know what's best, what's right for you,and then all of a sudden something happens and turns your plans upside down

Jane's dream had ripped her heart from her chest, as if the past were a lion that could eat her alive.

The Second Coming' by William Butler Yeats

Girls have to be dauntless," Mathilda said. "And twice as excellent

Sometimes a person has to visit where he came from to find out where he's going," he said. "Life never stays the same—as much as we love today, tomorrow's coming fast.

The scarf, a gift from Willa—purchased lovingly, with money from her savings account, from a Paris boutique—had been one of Kate's most prized possessions. Its thick, creamy silk had felt so soft around her neck, the fringe so jaunty and brave.