Olympus, Texas

Being family just means we don't have the safety of fences between us.

When people define themselves in comparison to something else, they become that much more committed to never changing their minds about that something else.

June has always been wrong in her assumptions about love--so wrong, in fact, that at this point she should assume the opposite of what she believes and then be right for once in her life. The most ridiculous, looking back, was her assumption that true love bestowed a contentment that blotted out all else. June blamed her assumption on the books she had read from ages ten to sixteen, even though she could blame herself for not noticing what the books showed bore no resemblance to her firsthand experience of matrimony, her parents. June had figured the problems lay in her parents as human beings and not some defect of love. She hadn't yet learned that since love was the creation of two people, and people were always defective in one way or another, then the love itself was necessarily flawed. She knew that now, definitively.

Our reactions to most things are muddier than we admit. Yours don't have to be all good or all evil. They just are what they are. [Cole Doherty, to June Briscoe]

Their home, though full of love—for he did truly love his son, his daughter, and most certainly his wife—was not a comfort. It felt, at times, like a thing to be endured, and when we endure things, we start believing that we deserve a reward for that endurance.

Being family just means we don’t have the safety of fences between us.

Raised poor by a single mother, she knew the things she wanted, made sure to only want attainable things.

How had he not understood before that having a child with another person opens you up to a vulnerability that only the ignorant or foolish would enter into? Or those in love, close to the same thing.

She had shown him that fate wasn't just a thing that wrecked plans. It could dispense good as easily as bad.

[Cole Doherty] 'You're asking the wrong person. I don't believe unconditional love is a human emotion.' 'Really?' June [Briscoe] tends to believe this, too, but she's never said it out loud. 'Strongest drive in any mammal, and I limit it to mammals just because they're my area of specialized knowledge, is to avoid pain. It takes a lot to overcome that. But people, and animals, they do it all the time. They put themselves in mortal danger to save their children. But emotional pain is different. If your love is getting pushed back at you, that unconditional river of it, you can avoid the pain so easily by draining out the water.

Vera always expected bad news; it was a trait they [Vera and Hap Briscoe] shared, the pessimism of people who have had their full share. Your mother's lost her job, your father's child support payment is late, your crazy brother has knocked out the principal's son, your mother is not speaking to your father again. Pessimism wasn't a negative trait for them. It was a way to consistently feel happier, each mediocre event a triumph over potential calamity.

It's much easier to break a thing that has already been broken once. Mending rarely makes it stronger.

...those absent can feel more present, do more damage, than any warm body in the room.

He [March Briscoe] had been so preoccupied with his inability to control himself, he hadn't realize that even when you controlled yourself, you couldn't control other people.

They smiled at each other, and Artie didn't so much recognize her attraction to this man [Ryan Barry] as recognize that she felt like a solid that had suddenly become liquid.

If romantic love contained so much foolishness, waste, and want, why seek it out? It seemed a natural disaster on par with a hurricane--one would deal with it only if evacuation proved impossible.