“He threw in the towel before we were tested. Maybe because he didn't want to be tested. Maybe because he assumed we would fail. Maybe because, at the time, he just didn't love me enough.”

“Did you ever think"..."That Keenan didn't fall because he was being punished?"..."Maybe..."..."Just maybe he fell because he was favored.”

“I didn't think he was in love with me and I had no idea what I felt for him, but he wanted me, and maybe that was enough.”

“His longterm aspirations were not a subject upon which he allowed himself to dwell. Not because they were in any way bad or bizarre, but because he had come to realize he didn't have any. Nothing specific anyway. He'd never pictured himself as anything in particular. Just a situation where he made enough money doing something... anything... enough to have whatever he wanted. A nice new Dodge pickup. A boat or maybe a little house someplace. The kind of things people wanted.”

“Maybe we tried so hard to be like the Sisterhood because it was easy for them and we wanted it to be easy for us. Because they were lucky and we wanted to be lucky too. They had wonder, and we didn't have any. We looked for the magic, but we didn't fine it. We waited for the magic, but it didn't find us.”

“He rubbed at the dirt furiously, making the circle disappear, and begged God to do the same thing to him. Just open up the ground and swallow him whole. Because if he couldn't go on living in His image, then he didn't want to go on living at all. But the ground didn't open and he wasn't swallowed up by the dirt, maybe because even unnatural things were created in God's image.”