“Gorgeous, glowing rays of light...This was what true beauty and goodness looked like-- a spectral, luminescent gathering of beings so pure it hurt to look directly at them, like the most glorious eclipse, or maybe Heaven itself.”

“What's the light of Heaven look like on earth? Like sunlight streaming through clouds in the tackiest garage sale painting you ever saw. Really, it's so beautiful it's embarrassing. No subtlety whatsoever.”

“Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.”

“It was quite impossible to describe.Here is what it looked like.It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon. ”

“Everyone in the room was so spectral-looking that Madeleine’s natural healthiness seemed suspect, like a vote for Reagan.”

“It was probably true that he objectified women. He thought about them all the time, didn't he? He looked at them a lot. And didn't all this thinking and looking involve their breasts and lips and legs? Female human beings were objects of the most intense interest and scrutiny on Mitchell's part. And yet he didn't think that a word like objectification covered the way these alluring - but intelligent! - creatures made him feel. What Mitchell felt when he saw a beautiful girl was more like something from a Greek myth, like being transformed, by the sight of beauty, into a tree, rooted on the spot, forever, out of pure desire. You couldn't feel about an object the way Mitchell felt about girls.”