“Or maybe, knowing that intercourse involved certain unsavory sights, smells, and sounds, God deliberately left the ingredients for alcohol lying around where man would undoubtedly find them.”

“It's strange, isn't it, how you never know you're living the best time of your life at the moment you're living it? If you could appreciate, at that instant, that this is it, maybe you'd make certain your mind imprinted every detail of the sights, smells, sounds and sensations. Then again, maybe knowing that life will only get duller, sadder, less hopeful afterward would inject melancholy into that moment. You'd miss life's peak experience by mourning it before it passes. So perhaps it's best not to know.”

“You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them.”

“I know it’s going to sound funny, but I know you’ve been hanging around with that Billie Marsh, so maybe it won’t be strange after all. Would you be my best man—or, I don’t know, my best lady?”

“The sights and sounds of human depravity were too much to forget. Is this hell? She wondered fleetingly. If not, where is God?”

“Where both deliberate, the love is slight; Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?”