“We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.”

“My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.”

“But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.”

“The world is filled with human toxins -- not the darkness that we all occasionally crave, but actually people who are so unwilling to bask in the angelic light that is offered us all that they grow poisonous -- and you can pray for their eventual recovery and healing. And sometimes those prayers will be answered. But sometimes these individuals have been vaccinated against goodness and against angels and they are so unwilling to give an inch to their God that often they never (and I use this expression absolutely literally) see the light.”

“Boys look at us like we look at horses: color, height, eyes. tail. They can't help but have preferences.”

“Those who participate in a genocide as well as those who merely look away rarely volunteer much in the way of anecdote or observation. Same with the heroic and the righteous. Usually it's only the survivors who speak-and often they don't want to talk much about it either. p. 75”

“Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.”