“Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.”

“I am bigger than anything that can happen to me.All these things, sorrow, misfortune, and suffering, are outside my door.I am in the house, and I have the key.”

“It is a wholly deplorable state of affairs when specialists in any discipline talk only to each other, and accordingly I have sought to write a book which will communicate some of the fruits of research in a manner which will make them accessible to all.”

“When students write from experience, they can breathe those specifics into their writing- dialect, odd smells, precise names of plants- that can animate even the most tired and tedious text.”

“The top 10% of the people who are most creative, constructive and thoughtful, do not have much to do with churches. To them the canons of reason come first, making faith secondary and questionable.”

“Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But...hear this: I think that maybe in our lives -- in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles -- we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less.”

“We carry on. We have ourselves and we carry on- in spite of our losses and mistakes and women, I think, have more than most. We are good secret-keepers. We can tie weights to out guilt and passions, and hatred and deceitfulness, and let them sink down, so that you'd never know they existed at all. But we know. I can count all mine.”