“You must try,the voice said, to become colder.I understood at once.It's like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,braced in stone. Only something heartlesscould bear the full weight.”

“Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against.”

“No," said a voice, "the only thing wrong on a night like that is that there is a world and you must come back to it.”

“The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law.”

“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of–” I hesitated.“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money–that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it.”

“The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.”