“We've only been sitting here forty minutes. I'm never at the morning table less than an hour and a half. I do some of my finest plotting over breakfast coffee and raisin brioche.”

“It's only life. We all get through it. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in acidents or altercations, while others skate through the years with nothing worse to worry about than an occassional bad-hair day.I still possessed both legs and both eyes, and even my hair looked all right when I rose that Wednesday morning in late January. If I returned to bed sixteen hours later, having lost all my hair but nothing else, I would consider the day a triumph. Even minus a few teeth, I'd call it a triumph.”

“I do not permit blasphemy, the F-word, or obscenities such as soy milk at my table. Consider yourself chastised.”

“Boo fell in at my side. He is the only ghost dog I have ever seen. Animals always move on. For some reason he had lingered more than a year at the abbey. Perhaps waiting for me.”

“Half a century goes by in what seems like a year. Don't waste an hour in boredom, son, or wishing for tomorrow.”

“The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.”

“Sometimes complex and difficult moral choices are decided less by reason and by right than by sentiment. Perhaps such decisions are paving stones on the road to Hell; if so, my route is well paved, and the welcoming committee all ready knows my name.”