“Did God ever cry over his lost angel, I wonder?”

“Do you think they missed him terribly when he fell? Did God cry over his lost angel, I wonder?”

“…crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.”

“I know,' Jed says. I'm thrown over his shoulder and I can feel how his body shakes and I know that he is crying. For me, for Beth. And I wonder if there was ever a crueler world than this one that forces us to kill the people we love most.”

“It was the sound of a thousand hungry children crying, ten thousand widows tearing their hair over their husband's graves, a chorus of angels singing the last dirge on the day of God's death.”

“My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling?”