“At St. Bernardine’s the nuns never liked me. Especially Sister Mary Bitch-and-a-Half. I think that was her biblical name.”

“She named me Daisy St. Patience and never wanted to know what name I walked in the door with.”

“A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)”

“Living in filth was regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was emninent for filthiness; St. Simon Stylites was in this respect unspeakable - the least that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors.”

“...they did not come down hard on Leone because she had murdered her lover. It was because her sister was a nun.”

“God, I want you,’ he breathed, and Bernadette’s throat closed, trapping her breath, while every last ounce of strength drained out of her and left her with knees turned suddenly to rubber.‘I’ve never said that to a nun before,’ he mused wryly. ‘But then I’ve never met a nun like you. I doubt anyone has. What business has a woman Like you got being a nun, for the love of God!”