“she's never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace”

“A bird in the hand loses its mystery in no time flat.”

“It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.”

“How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.”

“As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing...he did not claim that God moves in mysterious ways. Instead he seemed to believe, as she did, though they never could have discussed it, that everything else is in motion while God does not move at all. God sits still, perfectly at rest, the silver dollar at the bottom of the well, the question.”

“That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony.”

“Water, in Grace, is an all-or-nothing proposition, like happiness. When you have rain you have more than enough, just as when you're happy and in love and content with your life, you can't remember how you ever could have felt cheated by fate.”