“Most girls have a recipe for disaster, but few of them actually find all the ingredients and bake them at the right temperature. If they did, they'd learn to measure more accurately and that they ought to clean up their mess as they go along.”

“I think it's more accurate to think of aesthetics as a key ingredient in a recipe, as opposed to the icing on the cake.”

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”

“There's nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster.”

“No matter how careful you are"..."there's always going to be a mess, and you're going to have to clean it up afterward.”

“You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.”