“Then tell them, faintly, 'I heard screaming'. Men with a history of violence live in fear of retribution.”

“There are times in history when the dark drums of God can barely be heard amid the noises of this world. Then it is only in moments of silence, which are rare and brief, that their beat can be faintly discerned. There are other times. These are the times when God is heard in rolling thunder, when the earth trembles and the treetops bend under the force of [God’s] voice. It is not given to men [and women] to make God speak. It is only given to them to live and to think in such a way that, if God’s thunder should come, they will not have stopped their ears.”

“I know from vast experience that fear talks a lot louder than courage. I need to listen to that other voice inside me, that faint one that's struggling to be heard.”

“He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.”

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

“(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.”