“How badly I wanted to belong as I had when I was a young Mormon girl, to be simply a working part in the great Mormon plan of salvation, a smiling exemplar of our sparkling difference. But instead I found myself a headstrong Mormon woman staking out her spiritual survival at a difficult point in Mormon history. ”

“I am not the same kind of Mormon girl I was when I was seven, eight, or eighteen years old.  I am not an orthodox Mormon woman like my mother.  I am an unorthodox Mormon woman with a fierce and hungry faith. ”

“This is a church of tenderness and arrogance, of sparkling differences and human failings. There is no unmixing the two.”

“I can’t go on like this, I told myself. And You can’t possibly want me to feel this way, I demanded of God.  God didn’t argue. Forced to choose between my nostalgia for the faith of my childhood and my dignity as an adult, I put down the doll and drove away.”

“I love Mormon boys!”

“Does not-your boyfriend realize I'm Mormon?"I nod. "It turns out, Holder doesn't have an issue with Mormons at all. He just has an issue with assholes.”

“During our visit, we noticed she was mixing up words. She started referring to Muslims as Mormons. After 9/11, she told Jon and me how it was important for America to stop the radical Mormons because they had perpetrated the attacks on the Twin Towers.There was no way we could convince her of the difference. We'd just smile and not. "That's right, Grandma, all the Mormons got together on September 11th and ran their bicycles into the Twin Towers!”