“They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home.”

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack who got lost in the woods. His best friend went after him. Along the way, she had many adventures. She met woodsmen, witches, and wolves. She found her friend in the thrall of a queen who lived in a palace of ice and had a heart to match. She rescued him with the help of a magical object. And they returned home, together, and they lived on, somehow, ever after. It went something like that, anyway.”

“I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on. maybe it had seen places you never had, been rerouted and passed through so many strange hands, but still somehow found its way back to you, all before the day even began. ”

“Had Luther and Calvin been confined before they had begun to dogmatize, the states would have been spared many troubles.”

“for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.”

“I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.”