“To speak in a flat voiceIs all that I can do.I have gone every placeAsking for you.Wondering where to turnAnd how the search would endAnd the last streetlight spinAbove me blind. Then I returned rebuffedAnd saw under the sunThe race not to the swiftNor the battle won. Liston dives in the tank,Lord, in Lewiston, Maine,And Ernie Doty's drunkIn hell again. And Jenny, oh my JennyWhom I love, rhyme be damned,Has broken her spare beautyIn a whorehouse old.She left her new babyIn a bus-station can,And sprightly danced awayThrough Jacksontown.Which is a place I know,One where I got picked upA few shrunk years agoBy a good cop.Believe it, Lord, or not.Don't ask me who he was.I speak of flat defeatIn a flat voice. I have gone forward with Some, a few lonely some. They have fallen to death. I die with them. Lord, I have loved Thy cursed,The beauty of Thy house:Come down. Come down. Why dostThou hide thy face?”

“How many times would I damn myself for you? Ask me that.""How many?" she said faintly, her eyes searching his face. She stopped breathing to hear his answer."Till the gates of hell close," he said flatly.”

“Although, dear Lord, I have no feeling of confidence in Thee, I know all the same that Thou art my God, that I am wholly Thine, and that I have no hope but in Thy goodness; therefore I abandon myself entirely into Thy hands.”

“A BlessingJust off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the eyes of those two Indian poniesDarken with kindness.They have come gladly out of the willowsTo welcome my friend and me.We step over the barbed wire into the pastureWhere they have been grazing all day, alone.They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happinessThat we have come.They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.There is no loneliness like theirs.At home once more,They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,For she has walked over to meAnd nuzzled my left hand.She is black and white,Her mane falls wild on her forehead,And the light breeze moves me to caress her long earThat is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.Suddenly I realizeThat if I stepped out of my body I would breakInto blossom.”

“I am not certain just what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: ‘Did you love me?’ I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all—‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.’ [Luke 10:27].”

“I love you, Rylann." He cupped her face, peering down into her eyes. "And now I finally have a good answer to the one question everyone always asks me--why I hacked into Twitter. I didn't know it at the time... but I did it to find you again."She leaned into him, curling her fingers around his shirt. "That may be the best justification I've ever heard for committing a crime." She looked up at him, her eyes shining. "And I love you, too, you know.”

“All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father’s home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in.”