Ain’t I your man?” he persisted.“Yeah, Ellis, you’re my man.” Her lips quaked as she said it.

— Tracy Winegar

Clearly knew well that it was one thing to occupy his bed, quite another to occupy his heart.

— Tracy Winegar

Ellis,” he said. “You’re watchin’ a miracle right under your nose.” He gave a few of the seeds to Ellis and let him drop them into the hole he had already made. “In each of them little things, God put life. Now you take care with it, and you feed it with water and sunlight. And, most important of all of ’em, put it in good ground, and that life is going to sprout right out.

— Tracy Winegar

In the back of his mind, he had always wondered why — why they harbored such resentment for him. Now he had the answer, and he felt sick. He felt the bottom dropping out.

— Tracy Winegar

Just ’cause a body says somethin’ don’t make it so. You know who you are, and they can’t change that no matter what them cacklin’ hens is to say.” He tapped him on the chest. “What matters is what’s in here, son. Not a soul can take that away from you.

— Tracy Winegar

She remembered the day vividly, for how can you forget the day your heart is broken? The funny thing about a broken heart is that it's not fatal. Though you wish in vain that it were, life continues on, and you have no choice but to continue on with it. You take the hand that fate has dealt you, and you press forward because there is nothing else that can be done.

— Tracy Winegar

There was a moment of hesitation in which Joe looked into her eyes, and she looked back without flinching. Many a time, he had been at the same game with her, and she had always crumbled, bowing to his will. Now, he must have realized he was looking into the eyes of a stranger. She was someone he could not recognize, a foreigner inhabiting the body of that old Clearly, the girl he had abused, intimidated, and broken. Clearly decided then and there she would no longer cower before him. It was almost as if she were daring him to strike her in their unspoken exchange.

— Tracy Winegar