“To other cities, other machines, other forests of buildings of concrete where other men and women missed the stars at night and tended small plants on windowsills and kept tiny dogs and took them for walks along corridors in the endless procession of boxes and intersections and lights; where they rented space in other peoples's property so they had somewhere to sleep so they could get up and perform profit-related tasks they neither understood nor cared about, simply so they would be given the tokens of exchange they needed in order to rent the space in which they slept and snarled and watched television until finally some of them slipped out of the window and ran howling down the dark streeets, throwing off a numbness handed down from a society that was itself trapped in fracture and betrayal and despair; the lonely insane in a culture turning into a Christmas bauble, gaudy beauty wrapped around an emptiness coalescing faster and faster into parking lots and malls and waiting areas and virtual chat rooms--non places where nobody knew anything about anybody anymore.”

“Making something secret makes it too important, elevates it to the point where it runs your life from the shadows. If you hide what's at your core from other people for too long, sooner or later you end up hiding it from yourself and waking up with no idea of who you are.”

“The aim is not therefore to liberate some 'essential self' by throwing off the burden of government and the State, but to develop the self in creative and voluntary relations with others.”

“He was one of those old people who give the impression of having undergone a lifetime trial by fire which they somehow managed to turn to their own good in the end; using the fire to burn away everything in them that could possibly decay, everything mortal. So that what remains finally are only their cast-iron hearts, the few muscles and bones tempered to the consistency of steel needed to move them about, the black skin annealed long ago by the sun's blaze and thus impervious to all other fires; and hidden deep within, out of harm's way, the indestructible will: old people who have the essentials to go on forever.”

“All our days are marked with/unexpected/affronts--some/disastrous, others/less so/but the process is/wearing and/continuous./Attrition rules./Most give/way/leaving/empty spaces/where people should/be.”

“When you heart is ablaze with the love of God, when you love other people - especially the ripsnorting sinners - so much that you dare to tell them about Jesus with no apologies, then never fear, there will be results.”

“Sometimes I wake at night and worry that I might have disappeared in my sleep. That's what happens when nobody cares about you. Bit by bit you begin to disappear until people look right through your chest and head like you're made of glass. It's not about love; it's about being forgotten. We only exist if others think about us. It is like that tree that falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it. Who the fuck cares except the birds?”