“I fell in love with Caligula and now I'm married to Calvin.”

“She wanted them to go together to some hopelessly disreputable bar and to console one another in the most maudlin fashion over a lengthy succession of powerful drinks of whiskey, to compare their illnesses, to marry their invalid souls for these few hours of painful communion, and to babble with rapture that they were at last, for a little while, they were no longer alone.”

“To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whisky bottle. To mingle their pain their handshake had promised them, was to produce a separate entity, like a child that could shift for itself, and they scrambled hastily toward this profound and pastoral experience.”

“It all begins, I maintain, with that powerful and underutilized thing called love. God's love for the individual is displayed by those people who reflect his love in their words and deeds. It ultimately gets understood and accepted by the child in poverty, and through that individual's love for others, the world gets changed.”

“They miss the whisper that runsany day in your mind,"Who are you really, wanderer?"--and the answer you have to giveno matter how dark and coldthe world around you is:"Maybe I'm a king.”

“Ask MeSome time when the river is ice ask memistakes I have made. Ask me whetherwhat I have done is my life. Othershave come in their slow way intomy thought, and some have tried to helpor to hurt: ask me what differencetheir strongest love or hate has made.I will listen to what you say.You and I can turn and lookat the silent river and wait. We knowthe current is there, hidden; and thereare comings and goings from miles awaythat hold the stillness exactly before us.What the river says, that is what I say.”

“But when adults speak up for the vulnerable and the weak, working and demanding that safety and respect prevail, God's little lambs are protected and nourished. They know they are not abandoned; they are loved. And the world becomes a little more like heaven as a result.”