“He had been diagnosed as suffering from atypical schizophrenia. Lord, how he hated that awful-sounding label. It conjured up visions of some deranged maniac escaped from a secure mental hospital.”

“Either way, Grayson found it ironic how such dissimilar circumstances, colleges, and mental hospitals, had led to the same awful apartment.”

“Grigorenko was deprived of his rank, his pension and his Party membership and confined for fifteen months, eight of them in psychushka where he was diagnosed as suffering from 'sluggish schizophrenia', a conceptual concoction of the Soviet psychiatrist Andrei V. Snezhnevsky, who has enlarged the definition of schizophrenia by including the mildest of neuroses. Snezhnevsky's neuroses manifested themselves in such symptoms as social withdrawal, confrontations with authorities, philosophical concerns and the desire to reform society.”

“The sound of his rough voice was…comforting, like there was safety wherever he was. Well, some safety…he certainly had an awful lot of sneaky tricks up his sleeve.”

“I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.”

“He started keeping a journal — had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.”