“...sick, my brothers are sending me home. This place infects me. Templeton my smooth little pill... such images I have. Such voices, that high voice, the little girl's so naughty, talking to me, all the time now. How I hate her... the train is empty, Albany a small, spangled fish... this train is all brown velvet... the train slows, I am in Templeton, oh. Templeton, Templeton, the train says, slowing down. The lake, the blue, is an embrace.”

“My Templeton is to Cooperstown as a shadow is to the tree that spawned it; an outline that takes texture from the ground it falls on.”

“...no genius, I am a girl who knows too much to know anything at all...”

“When I was small and easily wounded, books were my carapace. If I were recalled to my hurts in the middle of a book, they somehow mattered less. My corporeal life was slight; the dazzling one in my head was what really mattered. Returning to books was coming home.”

“Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.”

“Abruptly, Templeton cut short his thoughts. There was a brief pause, almost as if he was uncertain whether he should continue.'Uh ... but ... no,' he said slowly, 'he's the most ...' He stopped, then started again. 'In my view,' he declared, 'he is the most important human being who ever existed.'That's when Templeton uttered the words I neer expected to hear from him. ' And if I may put it this way,' he said in a voice that began to crack, 'I ... miss ... him!'With that tears flooded his eyes. He turned his head and looked downward, raising his left hand to shield his face from me. His shoulders bobbed as he wept."-Former Minister and now Agnostic Charles Templeton speaking of Jesus”

“The writing seemed like the books that held it; crumbly and antique and bearing the stink of centuries. Still, it was compelling. His voice was smooth and kind, and once in a while an observation that would ring so true it vibrated like flicked crystal.”