“A dead eagle he might have buried, but he had chosen rather to light a fire for a phoenix.”

“Forget the past, let the dead bury the dead. Things were working out fine, and that was the only thing he had to remember.”

“When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.”

“Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.”

“…Or he could choose life. At that pivotal moment, it occurred to him that with all hisschooling in theology he had, perhaps, missed the entire point of his studies, the verycrux of the gospel he had professed to believe. That the measure of a person’s heart, thebarometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness tochoose life over death. That the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant andeternal. And this is where he failed, for to choose life is to choose sorrow as well as joy,pain as well as pleasure. When Hunter had buried Rachel, he buried along with her hisheart, lest it might heal and feel and grow again. And in so doing he had chosen morethan death, he had chosen damnation itself, for damnation is nothing more than to stopa thing in its eternal progression. In that first flight from West Chester he had run notonly from the horror and pain of death but from life itself.”

“Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.”