“He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.”

“[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.”

“He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.”

“He had never loved anything except what was inevitable. The people fate had imposed on him, the world as it appeared to him, everything in his life he had not been able to avoid...For the rest, for everything he had to choose, he made himself love, which is not the same thing. No doubt he had known the feeling of wonderment, passion, and even moments of tenderness. But each moment had sent him on to other moments, each person to others, and he had loved nothing he had chosen, except what was little by little imposed on him by circumstance, had lasted as much by accident as by intention, and finally became necessary: Jessica.”

“…Or he could choose life. At that pivotal moment, it occurred to him that with all hisschooling in theology he had, perhaps, missed the entire point of his studies, the verycrux of the gospel he had professed to believe. That the measure of a person’s heart, thebarometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness tochoose life over death. That the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant andeternal. And this is where he failed, for to choose life is to choose sorrow as well as joy,pain as well as pleasure. When Hunter had buried Rachel, he buried along with her hisheart, lest it might heal and feel and grow again. And in so doing he had chosen morethan death, he had chosen damnation itself, for damnation is nothing more than to stopa thing in its eternal progression. In that first flight from West Chester he had run notonly from the horror and pain of death but from life itself.”

“If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself… and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.”