“Jonas Wergeland's first stroke of genius, albeit unbeknownst to himself, was to choose a girl as his best friend. It was Nefertiti who taught him that women are, first and foremost, teachers then mistresses - and above all that when you come right down to it, the female is a very different and, more o the point, a much more fascinating creature than the male. ”

“..he was 'nuts about her', as the parlance of the day had it, as if it were generally recognised that love and madness are adjoining rooms with extremely porous walls.”

“Few conversations, at any time of life, are more stimulating, more spontaneous and more genuinely original than those long ridiculous talks we all have, when we are very young, late at night about the meaning of life.”

“I believe that's when God first started speaking to my heart--the very day I started speaking to His!”

“When the trees and the power lines crashed around you, when the very roof gave way above you, when the light turned to darkness and water turned to dust, did you call on Him? When you called on Him, was He somewhere up there, or was He as near as your very breath?”

“...[F]ireworks had for her a direct and magical appeal. Their attraction was more complex than that of any other form of art. They had pattern and sequence, colour and sound, brilliance and mobility; they had suspense, surprise, and a faint hint of danger; above all, they had the supreme quality of transience, which puts the keenest edge on beauty and makes it touch some spring in the heart which more enduring excellences cannot reach.”

“Paul said in the second epistle...the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine...they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.”