“Whatever I do I've always done not because I want something but to compensate for a loss, to bring about a balance, to create amends, to make things right.”

“No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong. I fyou won't take a chance, then the powers you refuse because you cannot explain them, will, as they say, make a monkey out of you.”

“And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.”

“There's something about rushing water that I can watch for hours and feel as if I need to do nothing more. It's alive in a way that's greater than any description of it...”

“...this marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God's own signature on earth.”

“Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.”

“In a life, or a portion of a life illuminated, there's a fullness and a balance that no theory or abstraction can match. Why do people waste so much time on abstraction? The life that is given to us, that we play out, is something that you cannot any more grasp with systems and ideas than you can tame an elephant with tweezers.”