“It's a very brave thing for anyone to do, offering love to another person. We make ourselves so vulnerable when we do it, don't we? We give that other person such power to hurt us and to rob us of our dignity. No one should ever belittle that gift, nor the giver.”

“We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.”

“Still, despite the satisfaction of their surface lives, Cora Grovians share in full measure the pain that is the basis of all human misery: the fact that we can never be as important to anyone else as we are to ourselves.There simply is never enough love.”

“Sometimes to touch us, God touches someone that's close to us. This is what opens our eyes to the fact there is a higher power than ourselves, whether we call it God or not.”

“The Word says God don't give us credit for lovin the folks we want to love anyway. No, He gives us credit for loving the unlovable. The perfect love of God don't come with no conditions...”

“But sometimes we has to be thankful for the things that hurt us,' I said, 'cause sometimes God does things that hurts us but they help somebody else.”

“We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness.”