Lost Love's Return Quotes

“Elizabeth Baker quickly became the center of Peter’s universe. He had a constant longing to see her, to hear her voice, to have her smile at him, to feel her touch.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“He struggled to answer. Should he lie? He remembered his father’s voice, something he’d heard more than once. Don’t ever lie, boy. Do and you’ll just have to tell another lie to cover that one up. And before long you gonna need more lies than you’re smart enough to think up.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“Elizabeth had given him a convincing lesson in an ageless and immutable truth: aphrodisiacs will ever be sought; aphrodisiacs will ever be touted; but there will never be an aphrodisiac with the innate power of the right woman’s love.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“In this small county, Thelma knew the history of Emma and her family. What was saddest to Thelma, after Emma had left, was the feeling that Emma’s marriage to any man was probably doomed to failure when she was but a little girl; doomed to failure in 1904, when her father ran off to Texas with another woman, abandoned her, her mother, her three siblings. This marriage was doomed to failure when Emma’s father taught her the basic nature of men; that they were congenitally, irrevocably, and unpredictably sorry; that she could never really trust any man, even with his own money.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“Now,” she said. “There is something I want you to do for me that is
more important than sex.”
“What?”
“Just lie here all night and hold me and let me be close. Sex can be good, but often what a woman wants most is to just be held and to feel warm and close and loved . . . feel protected and secure.”
“I can do that,” he said. And he did.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“She had not only lost her virginity, she had learned that she could enjoy sex with a man, this man. Maybe, she thought, the most satisfying sexual pleasure would always come in the company of love. For on this day of her life, in the fall of 1918, she was definitely in love—deeply, passionately in love—with a young American soldier from a faraway place called Mississippi. She should have known it the day he left the hospital, a day she went home to a strange and wretched emptiness.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“I don’t want to be one of those hypocrites Daddy preaches about . . .don’t want to feel even worse than I already do. I may be a sinner, but I’m not one of those hypocrites.”
“You know your Bible?” Peter continued, confident she did. “It’s right there in that Bible . . . mighty plain . . . Everybody’s sinned . . . everybody. Paul told those Romans that, right there in that Bible. You want to know who the big hypocrites are, Carrie? It’s not them who commit sex sin, and are sorrowful. It’s them that claims to be good but don’t know how to love . . . love nobody but themselves . . . can’t love nobody they don’t start out liking.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“Peter looked up and gazed at a stained-glass window behind the altar depicting Christ on the Cross with a caption: 'God is Love.' Another major tenet of Peterism.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“Peter gave Casey a stern but loving look. “Son, you know that Golden Rule?'
Casey did, but it was Carrie who articulated it.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” she said, slowly and softly, but with confidence. The Golden Rule was the cornerstone of Peterism, something he wanted them to think more about.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“His voice had a tremor in it, a tone of anguish. “I don’t even know how many I’ve done killed . . . least five or six. . . maybe more’n that . . . and I never wanted to kill nobody. Nobody.”
“Peter, you couldn’t help it. You did what you had to do, because you are a soldier, and this is a war, an awful, senseless, bloody war. When soldiers fight a war, they kill people. Because that is war.”
“But I’ll always wonder if they was just like me; they didn’t want to kill nobody neither. Somebody made them think killing me was their duty, and all . . . that them German fellas I killed was just fellas like me, not knowing what they was doing . . .just doing what they thought they was expected to do. Like I was.”
“Peter, the Germans started this awful war. They deserved what they
got. You have nothing to feel bad about.”
“You think them German fellas I killed knew who started it?” Elizabeth wasn’t sure how to take the question. Was it an expression of cynical doubt . . . or sincere hope?”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“Peter wondered how he would feel killing a German soldier. Surely it would be different. The German soldier would be trying to kill him first.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“I believe you find your happiness mainly from within yourself. Inside I need to be needed, and if I’m nursing patients who need me, I can be happy.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“You don’t have to tell me about all this, and all, if you don’t want to. I can understand if you don’t want to. I can only know what I know about you now. That’s all I need to know.”
“No. I want you to know who I am, where I have come from as a person, like I now know where you have come from as a person. Then I hope you want to accept me and want to be with me, knowing all there is about me.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“For all of her life she had coped with insecurity by stonewalling reality. It was a talent she had lost forever.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“And those Twain books weren’t only about those boys having fun,” Peter continued, musing. “That fella,Twain, he was trying to tell us some stuff . . . like ain’t nothing right about no one man owning no other man . . . and them that don’t know it ain’t got no religion and ain’t got no right God.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return

“Then, I guess, there’s always abortion.” Peter felt a chill. “Hear it’s available in New Orleans. Some woman down on Cartels Street is supposed to be good with a coat hanger, long as she’s good and sober . . . did one for somebody here in the county couple of years ago. Far as I know went okay . . . but I can’t imagine anybody risking that. Wouldn’t chance it with my daughter.”
― Alfred Nicols, Lost Love's Return