“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.”

“The most important people in this man's life - the people who have mattered to him most - aren't my Mother or his wives or me or Anna or Allie. The people who matter most are the people in his head. That is loneliness.”

“He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day”

“Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years of his life.”

“Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.”

“He was defeated. Competitive him, who'd spent most of his life perfecting the art of winning. He'd been trounced by a woman. Killed with one look from those hazel eyes.”