“When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team. ”

“In all four years of high school, not once did I make the football team. The other part of the story is that I never even tried out. Just raw talent, I guess.”

“Hornergy' is Zen's term for the indomitable athletic edge powered by sexual restraint. The basketball, baseball and football teams haven't had a winning season in years. The table-tennis team, however, is undefeated.”

“If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back.”

“We used numbers and rigid systems to fit time into containers we could understand.But like Nexa said, it was immeasurable. A fluid river no logical structure could hold.A moment could have the power of years. And years could pass in a moment.The only thing that forever remained true about time was it never stopped moving forward.”

“College football was a religion in Alabama, and Saturdays in the fall were holy days.”

“There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all....”