“I’m tempted to kill the general first, then his staff officers. Sometimes you just want to eat pudding early. All the same, I make myself wait.”

“The good guys fight for freedom, justice and most words that don’t put food on the table. The bad fight to scrub those words from our speech. Only problem is, both sides claim to be good.”

“Could have been, mind you. And that's one big mother of a conditional. Because who's to say she wanted me in the same way? After all, she left me, didn't she? Maybe I didn't try too hard to get her to stay but what words are there for begging? Please? Don't go, honey? They're crippled halfwits, those sentences, and besides, who uses a lot of words in a friendship anyway? You run out of things to say pretty early on, that's my experience. Sure, you start off thick enough, so many words you could gag on them. The facts, and the sentences - and the sticky tears. Out it comes, out it all comes, the fat story of your life but before you know it you've talked your guts out and there's nothing left to say. You go to her, to confide, and choke up air.”

“That minute, that tiny second when you hit the water flat on, you lose your breath. All the air flattens out of you - like going flat out on concrete. Then the next second you're sliding through, sliding and sinking slowly to the bottom of the pool. You touch the bottom, you bounce once there gently like an astronaut. And you feel the bottom of the pool against the soles of your feet and that's queer-but not queer, because you're the same person, aren't you? Just in another place that's all, you've still got the same body there. You look around, in that blue time, in that deep place. You look around with the same eyes, at the milky chlorine blue, and you have so much time there. Deep in the water with your same body, but everything's different, everything's better.”

“Only let the darkness inside her that she fears also be the darkness of infinite gentleness, the mouth for killing the same mouth that carries the babies safely away.”

“Lord Jesus,' Christy whispered, 'I want You to hold the key. I want You to decide what should happen in my heart's garden. I want You to let in or send out anything or anybody You want. Especially with guys. I don't want to ever unlock that gate again. I want you to open it only when the right man comes along. Take the key, Lord. Take all my keys. I'll wait for you.”

“I'm not sure what the moral is here...I really just wanted to tell that story.”