“OCD focuses on the negative. I didn't think to myself, My praying will save my grandma. Instead, I thought, If I don't pray, my grandma will die for sure.”

“OCD is not a disease that bothers; it is a disease that tortures.”

“I don't think it was hate,' Castus replied thoughtfully. 'I think it was fear.”

“For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter’s ‘Barr-Bag,’ which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2,163 pearl buttons; nor of — in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel — or Suing Sophie!”

“Think of negative speech as verbal pollution. And that's what I've been doing: visualizing insults and gossip as a dark cloud, maybe one with some sulfur dioxide. Once you've belched it out, you can't take it back. As grandma said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The interesting this is, the less often I vocalize my negative thoughts, the fewer negative thoughts I cook up in the first place.”

“Now I lay me down to sleepI pray the Lord my soul to keepIf I die before I wakeI pray the Lord my soul to take.”

“I don't pray because it makes sense to pray. I pray because my life doesn't make sense without prayer.”