“Where I'm at is a big Episcopal church in downtown Newark, New Jersey, sitting in the dark while I try to rescue the doomed bits and pieces of life, in the hope that a mere story can become Noah's Ark and deliver all the living things of the past to a bright and glorious immortality?”

“If we can forgive what has been done to us . . .If we can forgive what we've done to others . . .If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our beingvillians or victims.Only then can we maybe rescue the world.But we still sit here, waiting to be saved. While we'restill victims, hoping to be discovered while we suffer.”

“I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful.”

“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”

“An important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.”

“I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune... but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. I hope, therefore I am.”

“To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”