“And also forever too late for Lily to learn that raging passion predicts nothing but a mess of bad news for everybody.”

“It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.”

“Lily's spirit neediness expressed itself raw as a kerosene blaze in the material world.”

“When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. Only desire trumps time.”

“Surely it is a sin to reject the few gifts we are given. Be happy in the flash of time granted to us or hurt forever.”

“People don't change, Lola said. Maybe you're still young enough to pretend that's not true. People are who they are, and everybody around them has to take it or go somewhere else.”

“Monroe had in fact preached that God was not at all such a one as ourselves, not one to be temperamentally inclined to tread ragefully upon us until our blood flew up and stained all His white raiment, but rather that He looked on both the best and worst of mankind with weary, bemused pity.”