“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.”

“It is like the parable Jesus told of the man who was forgiven a huge debt that he could never repay, but then he went out and beat up another man who owed him practically nothing. Once we've been forgiven, somehow we forget that the only difference between 'us' and 'them' is grace.”

“You made peace,” said the buffalo man. “You took our words and made them your own. They never understood that they were here—and the people who worshiped them were here—because it suits us that they are here. But we can change our minds. And perhaps we will.”

“I'll never disgrace myself. And I swear, it never crossed my mind about Holly. You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.”

“For an instant he was able to cross the line and understand this strange loyalty of Jew to Jew. Those Jews who lived free in England were only there due to some quirk of fate instead of Aushwitz and every Jew knew that genocide could have happened to his own family except for that quirk of fate.Yet, as time stood suspended, Gilray was all gentiles who never quite understood Jews. He could befriend them, work with them, but never totally understand them. He was all white men who could never quite understand black men and all black men who could never quite understand whites. He was all normal men who could tolerate or even defend homosexuals...but never fully understand them.There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different. ”

“Only because books are better than people, Father. ... Because they are masters who instruct without a rod. If you approach them, they are never asleep; if you are ignorant, they never laugh; if you make mistakes, they never chide. They give to all who ask of them, and never demand payment. ... All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, if God hadn't provided us with the remedy of books.”