“I live at the end of some interminable corridor which the lucky damned can call hell but which the much unluckier atheists - and your mother heads up that bunch- must simply get used to calling home.”

“Either I'm ridiculously lucky or ridiculously unlucky, I just don't know which one.”

“It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came.”

“Anyway, they used to beat up on Barry all the time. They called it roughhousing, which is like men calling lying bullshitting.”

“Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.”

“The child must have a valuable thing which Is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, she can reach back and live in her imagination.... Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.”