“A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories.”

“No one said a word; it was as if they were waiting for me to retract my question. Jan's hand found mine and held it."What the hell is this? A wake?" My grandpa came out of the house carrying a tray of buns.”

“Julian tried to keep a pleasant smile on his face, though already it felt strained. He was uncomfortable with people who used the word blessed as a part of their everyday speech. The implication was that God was intervening in the minutiae of their lives, hanging around and helping them with their jobs or children or household chores as though He had nothing better to do. Maybe it was true, Julian thought wryly. Maybe that was why there were wars and murders and earthquakes and hurricanes. God was too busy helping real estate agents find new listings to deal with those other issues.”

“Her last call, at midnight, had been the worst. "I'll pull your cock out of your asshole," she'd said, and for some reason her voice at that moment had reminded him of his mother's.”

“You can yell and scream, pound on the floor and stamp your feet. Or sit quietly, breathing slowly and do absolutely nothing. You neighbors might have a preference. The universe, dear one, could not care less.”

“Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power. (3)”

“What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content wi th the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things--from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies--which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity.”