“I wantyou to havethis,all the beauty in my eyes, and the grace of my mouth,all the splendor of my strength,all thewonder of the musk partsof mybody,for are wenot talking about real love, reallove?”

“People talk a lot about all the homosexuals there are to see in Greenwich Village, but it was all the neuters that caught my eye that day. These were my people -- as used as I was to wanting love from nowhere, as certain as I was that almost anything desirable was likely to be booby-trapped.”

“I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment: to love my Lord, my God, with all my heart. I don’t want the reputation that I love God, I don’t want to write songs about loving God, I don’t want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes, I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him, I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and it’s real.”

“I cling to the beauty and strength of nature and all wild creatures with a passion born of certainty that only through them can i retain my perspective about life and my own part in it.”

“I give you my name, my earthly possessions, and my eternal love. But of all the things I have, the thing I want most to give you are my eyes, these eyes that see how magnificently beautiful you are.”

“Grace (talking about Sam): At the sight of him, my stomach slid down to my feet, a weird combination of relief, nerves, and anticipation all in one, a feeling that never seemed to go away.”