"Once," Balinda begins softly, "when I was in the emergency room with my mother they brought in a murderer who had been shot and was dying, right there in front of us. I watched as the nurse touched his face and reassured him and I could not believe they were being so nice to him.""What happened?" Jill asked."My mother rose up, took my arm, gripped it as if she was a weight lifter and said, 'he was a beautiful baby once and his mother loved him'."

Previous Quote

Oh, it doesn't work at all. That's the problem! It's an endless, halting parade of inspections, bribes, and nonsense-but if you're aboard a Texas vessel, you'll find less inconvenience along the way." "It's because of their guns!" declared Mr. Henderson, once more escaping his reverie, bobbing out of it as if to gasp for air. "Concise, my love." Mrs. Henderson gave him a smile. "And correct. Texans are heavily armed and often impatient. They don't need to be transporting arms and gunpowder to create a great nuisance for anyone who stops them, so they tend to be stopped...less often.

— Cherie Priest