“God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces.”

“Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.”

“I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow.”

“We are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed by an alchemy of the soul into addiction, ulcers, strokes, hatred, even war.”

“My throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky and you want it, but eventually the need passes, and you feel restored.”

“But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.”

“Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac.”