“What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?”

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who — when he has been seriously noted at all — has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me?”

“I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.”

“And now I see what has been there all along, what I've noticed but never truly understood until now. Eli is as uncertain as I am, as we all are. Life has surprised him like it has me. Has hurt him like it has me.”

“Whatever else we may say about it, the atonement fulfills the Jewish principle that only one who has been hurt can forgive. At Calvary, God chose to be hurt.”

“One can know worlds one has not experienced, choose a response to life that has never been offered, create an inwardness utterly strong and fruitful.”