“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society.”

“We have to take the first step as though there were no God. It is no use to wait for God to help us, He will not: but immediately we arise we find He is there.”

“God's pleasure--the beauty creation possesses in his regard--underlies the distinct being of creation, and so beauty is the first and truest word concerning all that appears within being; beauty is the showing of what is; God looked upon what he had wrought and saw that it was good.”