“لقد شعرت دائماً أنه من المستحيل التعامل بشكل صحيح مع مكان أو شخص بدون إستصحاب كل القصص عن ذلك المكان وذلك الشخص. تبعات النظرة الآحادية هي هذه: أنها تجرّد الناس من الكرامة. إنها تجعل إعترافنا بتساوي إنسانيتنا صعب. وهي تؤكد كم أننا مختلفون بدلاً عن كم نحن متشابهون.”

“People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.”

“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.”

“And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.”

“Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.”

“...he did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary.”

“He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.”