“He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place. and he was in the habit of hoping for it.”

“What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could findin the grime of the everyday...he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it.”

“It was America, after all. The sort of place where you should be allowed to walk as high as you wanted. But what if you were the one walking underneath? What if the tightrope walker really had fallen? It was quite possible that he could have killed not just himself, but a dozen people below. Recklessness and freedom - how did they become a cocktail?”

“Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. Hewent where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was needed. Hetook little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. And if He rejected mystery, He would have been rejecting faith.”

“He could be in any mood or any place and, unbidden, it returned.”

“Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.”

“He looks like the sort of man who can't afford to leave, and doesn't want to stay, and so he is doing both at once.”