“And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.”

“Maybe I’d lost something. Maybe I’d lost a lot—more, even, than I could suffer—but I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn’t no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.”

“I was the luckiest girl. Don’t you think because I didn’t have no proper man or husband I was anything else. Wasn’t no place I’d rather be than right there. Even now, I pine for that uncomfortable rock. Because he was watching over me and loneliness was some far off thing, echoing off the Rock from other folks. Wasn’t nothing could ruin it for me.”

“Ain’t nothing scarier than someone with nothing.”

“not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.”

“Don’t matter none how bad it gets sometimes. You can always turn this shit around.”

“The terrible price of living, ain’t it? To live through others dying?”

“Can’t count on no miracles. Sometimes, you just got to have a plan.”

“That got me to laughing too. His laughter, like his yelling, got into you until you was right soaked with it. So you couldn’t help yourself. But it felt good. Light. I tell you, I hadn’t felt like that in a long while.”

“what I like and what I need’s two different things.”

“And if revenge was all I had, then I was goddamned if it wouldn’t be enough.”