“How many human eyes ...had snatched glimpses of their secret anatomies, down the passage of years?”

“It was only in the first few years that she felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single glimpse of clean, hard, radiant competence. She had fits of tortured longing for a friend or enemy with a mind better than her own.”

“The churning of a human mind is unpredictable, as is the anatomy of the human heart.”

“How is it that human anatomy evolved so that something as stupid-looking as a repetitive back-and-forth movement can generate the peak of physical ecstasy?”

“Had I glimpsed just a little of the suffering I would witness and the heartbreak I would endure, I would have fled in the other direction...But I could not foresee any of these things...And many years later, with tears in my eyes, I remembered my decision to follow this God no matter what the cost.”

“How curious it was, [...], that we humans had taken millions of year to crawl up out of the swamps and yet, within minutes of death, we were already tobogganing back down the slope.”