“The world is beautiful and glorious. Humanity can be mean, and turn away from what's good.”

“That word, calm, sounds impossibly beautiful, gloriously uncomplicated. A water-smooth word, a word that can take the edge away from fear, gloss it over, make it shiny. Calm. Gentle.”

“What, exactly, is the happiness that can be earned by turning away from reality?”

“Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.”

“God created us with sexual passion so that there would be language to describe what it means to cleave to him in love and what it means to turn away from him to others.”

“I wonder if to be human is to know that we can't ever banish pain and ugliness from the world, only learn from it and create something beautiful and good out of it ...”