“Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap.”

“It is clearly true that the reflex of disparagement is no more compatible with rigorous inquiry than the impulse to glorify.”

“She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.”

“It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it . . . so I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.”

“I don't know exactly what covetous is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.”

“I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.”

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”