“Why can't I find release from this world we created?”

“No conventional therapy can release us from a deep and abiding psychic pain. Through prayer we find what we cannot find elsewhere: a peace that is not of this world.”

“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 ...”

“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”

“Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent. Like the contents of Pandora's box, a story that's freely given can't be contained anymore. It becomes infectious, spreading from the person who created it to the person who listens, and passes it on.”

“What these people were trying to create or re-create here in this new world is beyond me. I can't put myself in their minds or their hearts, but I can sympathize with their struggle for an identity, with their puzzlement, which has troubled Americans from the very beginning - Who are we, where do we fit in, where are we going?”