“As for sin. I honestly can't believe God is so bored or so lecherous as to care how close my body and its various parts get to someone else's various parts.”

“Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?”

“Once, last year, I started going through my sins and Father Stephen said, "Oh, it's you, Josie." Can you believe it? He recognised me by my sins. I'm so boring that I can't even change my sins from term to term.”

“It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident or design, the microscopic pieces of ourselves borne by fluids and blood and growing into a tiny kingdom of cells inside someone else's body It seems so difficult to become alive. So improbable.”

“People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.”

“If I ever have to cast an acting role, I want the wrong person for the part. I can never visualize the right person in a part. The right person for the right part would be too much. Besides, no person is every completely right for any part, because part in a role is never real, so if you can't get someone who's perfectly right, it's more satisfying to get someone who's perfectly wrong. Then you know you've really got something.”