“You've got to think of the fine times you had with your mate, not the moment of his perishin'. Every tear you shed now only wets his windin' sheet and disturbs his rest”

“Hell was not a pit of fire and brimstone. Hell was waking up alone, the sheets wet with your tears and your seed, knowing the woman you had dreamed of would never come back to you.”

“Every moment you steal from the present is a moment you've lost forever. There is only now.”

“The power of a woman is in the tears she sheds, and the power of a man is wiping those tears while shedding his own.”

“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense his own already ... It is like a small child going to its father and saying, 'Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.' It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.”

“I sobbed again, and this time my father chuckled. "What's so funny?" I demanded, tilting my head when my cheek got his coat wet. "You didn't cry when Kevin Mitchell broke your arm, or when you got stabbed in the hip the last time we were here. But boy troubles are still enough to reduce you to tears.”