“What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?”

“What about my rights? What about a person's privacy? Did all that just go to hell after 9/11?”

“Sometimes when you push someone, you find out who that person really is.”

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

“I shook my head at all the things that can happen to break a man as he grows up and away from the pure potential of infancy, all the things that had fractured inside me. And I prayed silently that this infant, born into chaos, might meet with kindness, experience joy and find passion in life. Every one of us ought to be able to count on that much. (308)”

“That's what a little victory in psychiatry looks like. You slip into the shadows, dodging the mind's defense mechanisms, glad enough to take a half-step toward the truth. Behind the next word or the next glance may lurk the demon you seek, all in flames, desperate to be held, but set to flee. (8)”

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