“Dig -- the mostly uncouth -- language of grace.”

“Snooki is a bestselling author? Huh? What? I don't know if I should dumb down my book, shoot myself or find a publisher who'll settle for a rough draft written on a Pop-Tart and a coconut lotion handie..”

“I wouldn't mind dispatching all 3 of my room mates vile felines in this apartment. Nasty beasts. I'm just afraid I wouldn't be able to sell "curiosity" as a serial killer.”

“Not as we are but as we must appear, contractual ghosts of pity; not as we desire life, but as they would have us live, set apart in timeless colloquy. So it is required; so we bear witness, despite ourselves, to what is beyond us,each distant sphere of harmony forever poised, unanswerable. It is without consequence when we vaunt and suffer, or if it is not, all echoes are the same in such eternity. Then tell me, love,how that should comfort us-or anyone dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place crying to the end ”I have not finished.”From 'Funeral Music”

“Evil is not good's absence but gravity'severlasting bedrock and its fatal chainsinert, violent, the suffrage of our days.”

“Finally coming to terms with Fathers Day. I blow as a Dad. I get it. No, I'm not an evil, abusive Father, it's just that while all my intentions and thoughts have been out of love for my kids, my actions and behaviour never measured up.”

“The English language is shot through with idioms and expressions which allude to violence without inciting it, most of which pass without notice unless they're called to your attention. One of the most disingenuous moves in the incivility wars is to treat these expressions with a specious literalism; politics makes Freudians of us all. (205)”