“You should never use propaganda to teach kids the truth.”

“Gus, its never too late for redemption. The scars never run too deep, so deep that God is not there.""I should know this. I minister to scarred people everyday. It just feels impossible when the scars are your own, or are those of the person you wronged so fully""It feels different when its you""Why is it the good you do seems like a drop in the bucket but the evil spreads for miles & miles”

“Fact: I don't know of a single girl who doesn't wish the show-it-all boxer-shorts phenomenon would go away as well. Guys, we just don't want to see your underwear. Truthfully, we believe that there is a direct correlation between how much underwear you show and how much you've got upstairs, if you know what I mean.”

“I've met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I've met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I'd rather sit in the home of the atter with and errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I'd been before I got there. ”

“If I was an eccentric old spinster in a Merchant Ivory movie, I'd want to share my lovely cottage with Holly and that's the truth. I'd do the cooking and leave the decorating to her, and we'd be inseparable.”

“From two niches (to use Barber's word), North and South, we've splintered into hundreds of thousands, a nation of tribes connected not by kinship or even creed. We're merely tethered together by the Internet, by our brand loyalties and shared consumer obsessions.”

“I've never heard anyone come back from downtown Baltimore waxing poetic about the authenticity of poverty.”