“She was the sort of person for whom fear was the natural response to that beyond explanation.”

“But there was no use pretending: I was not the sort of person who counted blessings; I was the sort of person for whom there could never be enough blessings.”

“The common person fears to think beyond the common.”

“She knew his secret: for all his wandering, his independence and his unorthodox ways, he took his responsibilities very seriously. He even borrowed others' responsibilities, making them his own simply because he thought this sort of service was owed to those whom he loved.”

“Nothing natural could cause this kind of fear. It goes beyond a fear of physical harm and into the realm of mental and spiritual. Like the fear of losing your sanity, of losing your soul.”

“The odd thing about Mama was that she liked to think of herself as a doomy sort of person, but there was a natural optimism in her that refused to be defeated, however hard she squashed it down, and I know that she never lost faith completely.”