“Suffering is not a credential; it is an assignment.”

“Sometimes we got to run to get to where the good Lawd need us to go. An' sometimes we got to just sit there an' listen for Him to tell us what to do, even if that mean we gotta suffer a li'l while.”

“Timothy grabbed his squealing, tearful wife and spun her around the room. Then he read the letter again just to be sure he hadn't misunderstood. He lightly brushed his fingers across the gold embossed letters KPH in the upper left-hand corner and then, overcome with emotion, covered his face with the letter. This was what he had been hoping for. All those years of rejections; the frustrations and self-doubt; the late nights of writing until five or six in the morning, only to have to stop and get ready to go to work exhausted; the stress on his marriage. Even the other employees where he worked had started kidding him, calling him "Mr. Shakespeare" to his face and making jokes about him behind his back. He was sick of being asked, "Have you gotten published yet?" The cost had been high; with each rejection letter, a new humiliation to suffer. It was all worth it now. This is what it had been about. Now he could say he was an author; and yes, dammit, he was published. His dream had finally come true.”

“He finally understood...the thing that the people during the Paleolitic Age, freaking 20,000 to 8,000 B.C., were after when they came up with mythologies to do with flight—a desire for the magic of the sky, for something bigger than their feet treading the earth.”

“You can watch me pee! It's okay! Here look, I'm peeing! I'm peeing! You can stop uprooting yourself.”

“Maybe you're not doing it right""I wasn't aware there was a technique to tree hugging.”

“Get your ass back on the tree, Jayne, I just lost the mojo.”