“Don't stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . .”

“Those that aspire to raise their head above the crowd are most likely to have it shot off.”

“Good advice is a wise man's friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave. ”

“Once traveling, it's remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else - ignorance, for example...Sure it's weak, but sometimes you'd rather just have a map.”

“And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my body until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.”

“But I shook my head. I just couldn't go with him. Nor could I tell him it wasn't his public mistreatment that stole my breath and blocked my tongue; it was something too mean to explain. It was the fact that Chester the Fester, the worst man I'd ever seen, even worse in his way than Israel Finch, got a whole new face to look out of and didn't even know to be grateful; while I, my father's son, had to be still and resolute and breathe steam to stay alive.”

“Don't you ever doubt it?" Davy asked.And in fact I have. And perhaps will again. But here is what happens. I look out the window at the red farm--for here we live, Sara and I, in a new house across the meadow, a house built by capable arms and open lungs and joyous sweat. Maybe I see our daughter, home from school, picking plums or apples for Roxanna; maybe one of our sons. reading on the grass or painting an upended canoe. Or maybe Sara comes into the room--my darling Sara--with Mr. Cassidy's beloved rolls on a steaming plate. Then I breathe deeply, and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers. Is there a single person on whom I can press belief?No sir. All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw.I've been there and am going back.Make of it what you will.”