“Whenever I'm asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say ransom notes.”

“If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you really are.”

“John Knox's dying words were, 'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy kirk.' Such was the last prayer of a great man without whom there would have been no America, no Puritans, no Pilgrims, no Scottish covenanters, no Presbyterians, no Patrick Henry, no Samuel Adams, no George Washington. Could it have been so simple? John Knox's agenda was far from political. All he wanted were more pastors and elders. This is our agenda. Lord grant true pastors to Thy church!”

“We sat at long tables side by side in a bigdusty room where we laughed and carriedon until they told us to pipe down and paint.The running joke was how we glowed,the handkerchiefs we sneezed into lightingup our purses when we opened them at night,our lips and nails, painted for our boyfriendsas a lark, simmering white as ash in a dark room."Would you die for science?" the reporter asked us,Edna and me, the main ones in the papers.Science? We mixed up glue, water and radiumpowder into a glowing greenish white paintand painted watch dials with a littlebrush, one number after another, takingone dial after another, all day long,from the racks sitting next to our chairs.After a few strokes, the brush lost its shape,and our bosses told us to point it withour lips. Was that science?I quit the watch factory to work in a bankand thought I'd gotten class, more money,a better life, until I lost a tooth in backand two in front and my jaw filled up with sores.We sued: Edna, Katherine, Quinta, Larice and me,but when we got to court, not one of uscould raise our arms to take the oath.My teeth were gone by then. "Pretty GraceFryer," they called me in the papers.All of us were dying.We heard the scientist in France, MarieCurie, could not believe "the mannerin which we worked" and how we tastedthat pretty paint a hundred times a day.Now, even our crumbling boneswill glow forever in the black earth.”

“Then like gravity, or maybe like magnets, our lips met again because they had to. And in that touch it felt like I was buried treasure he’d crossed seven seas to claim. I couldn’t feel the edges of my own body anymore; I was melting into his.”

“Did the continents, I wondered, feel lonely for each other as they drifted apart eons ago?”

“Without freedom, the family and faith cannot survive. Without faith, we will see freedom and family languish. And without family, man will give up on a generational commitment to faith and freedom.”