“I made friends easily, probably because I was spontaneous and average, which didn't intimidate people. It's the quiet ones kids are unsure about.”

“I usually like to interact with people who don't speak until it's necessary but I was intimidated by Carl's physique. I didn't feel inferior so much as incompatible. Carl existed on a plane where success was measured by physical feats. He had a brain because his body needed it, rather than the opposite. I didn't understand such people. I didn't know what they wanted, or might do.”

“He didn't understand how sadness came so easily to people. For him it was like a pile of rocks that had to be moved one at a time. Just thinking about it made him tired.”

“What I see here, what I feel here is that people in your world believe spirituality isn't distant. It's close and real. Religion seems born in the home, stays in the home. I mean, the services are even held in the home. And there's not one person in charge, one speaker set above the others. It's farmers and carpenters, and well, just average folk speaking spontaneously about the message they find in the Bible. [...] A message from the heart to the heart.”

“Normal is made up of two friends—Norm and Al. That’s twice the number of friends that I have, probably because I’m weirder than normal.”

“It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way--a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved. ”