“Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.”

“How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence. ”

“I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,” I heard myself saying, “and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.”

“A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her. They must be the most important thing in her life, but if she is the most important thing in theirs, she has failed.”

“Some people need Hell. If you’re the type of guy who sees a hooker in an alleyway and instinctively thinks, “Hey, now there’s something I could rape and kill without any consequences,” then the concept of Hell might really keep you out of trouble.”

“A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. There is a plant he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart.”