“All this time, Lev ever realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world.”

“He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.”

“It is forgiveness that sets a man working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven, and the consciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long more for its entire removal than ever he did before.”

“My father..." He paused painfully, his voice unsteady. "...thought he was drinking the nectar of the gods, but it turned out to be poison. He learned that men don't need gods after all; it's the gods who need men. That's what killed my father.”

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

“What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.”