“There is always so much talk about the sins of the fathers but it is the sins of the mothers that are the most difficult to avoid repeating.”

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”

“If pride is a sin, then love must be the mother of sin.”

“Virtue, should there be anyone who still ignores the fact, always finds pitfalls on the extremely difficult path of perfection, but sin and vice are so favoured by fortune...”

“I shouldn't be surprised. Catholicism is the ultimate loophole religion (sin, confess, repeat), so it makes sense that a priest would know better than anyone how to work the angles. Still, when you go to confession and say, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," you don't expect him to say, "So, who hasn't?”

“That first phrase-please bless me, Father, for I have sinned-was so humbling and so total, Matt always felt a kind of absolution as soon as he said it”