“God I loved Sammy. I’d considered marrying him, but his wife got upset when I asked for his hand.”

“I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he'd ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex. "Do you believe in God?" I asked my father."God has lots of potential," he said."When you pray," I asked him. "What do you pray about?""That's none of your business," he said. We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you,” Jesse asked, in a semi-amused voice, “ that a gentleman never lays a hand on a lady?” Which I thought was kind of funny, considering where Jesse had had his hand the last time I’d seen him. But I thought it better to let that slide.”

“When I got married, I could not have chosen a more gorgeous, loving, or perfect woman to crush than the one I broke up with to be with my wife.”

“Of course no one will consider,” said Anisim, and he heaved a sigh. “There is no God, anyway, you know, mamma, so what considering can there be?”Varvara looked at him with surprise, burst out laughing, and clasped her hands. Perhaps because she was so genuinely surprised at his words and looked at him as though he were a queer person, he was confused.“Perhaps there is a God, only there is no faith. When I was being married I was not myself. Just as you may take an egg from under a hen and there is a chicken chirping in it, so my conscience was beginning to chirp in me, and while I was being married I thought all the time there was a God! But when I left the church it was nothing. And indeed, how can I tell whether there is a God or not? We are not taught right from childhood, and while the babe is still at his mother’s breast he is only taught ‘every man to his own job.’ Father does not believe in God, either. You were saying that Guntorev had some sheep stolen.... I have found them; it was a peasant at Shikalovo stole them; he stole them, but father’s got the fleeces ... so that’s all his faith amounts to.”

“Who does not tremble when he considers how to deal with his wife For not only is he bound to love her but so to live with her that he may return her to God pure and without stain when God who gave shall demand His own again.”