“Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble.”

“I loved my father, but I was not like him. I never needed to believe the best of people. I took them as they were: two-faced, desperate, kind - perhaps all at once. But to Pa, they were all children of god, poor troubled sheep, who only needed love and an even break. He needed the world to back up what his religion told him about people. And when it came down to a choice between reason and faith, he let go of reason.”

“To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.”

“Women were the reason I became a monk - and, ah, the reason I switched back.”

“I meant just because someone came back for you is no reason to be with them; just because someone loves you is no reason to love them back.”

“It had to do with the way women throughout time has known the feel of love when it came to them.”