He wipes tears off my face and then snot. He uses his hands. He loves me that much.

Men were often far different in their roles as fathers than they were as suitors, the memories of which kept them, out of necessity, both vigilant and violent, and even in tender moments, to their daughters.

I can be anything I want to be. Just wait and you will see. Only time will tell what I will be.

She smiled at him, that same look of shared understanding, then reached in again to touch his hand, pinching his palm between her thumb and index finger. 'You OK?''I could be on fire, but seeing you would make it all OK,' he replied, his voice as brittle as a three-pack-a-day smoker.

Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain of the dead that, like an imaginary friend (or foe) or a secret concubine, constantly beckons, reminding us of our loss. What is memory but a ghost that lurks at the corners of the mind, interrupting our normal course of life, disrupting our sleep in order to remind us of some acute pain or pleasure, something silenced or ignored? We miss not only their presence, or how they felt about us, but ultimately how they allowed us to feel about ourselves or them. (prologue)

....he has done nothing but prove to me that not only is he a good man, he’s a man madly in love with my daughter, and will do anything to protect her.

You want something enough that you’re going to hurt, then you stay, and keep it.

It’s a father’s place to hate the son-in-law. It’s our place to put them through h*ll just to make sure they know what they’re doing.

I like him, sweetheart, and I’ll still give him hell. It’s my total right.

Because this is Beth's fight, and that's what fathers do for their little girls,' he said.