“Love and charity share the same root word (caritas). How is that possible, when everything in our recent history suggest they cannot coexist, that they are antiethical, that if you put the two of them together in a sack they would bite and scratch and scream, until one of them is torn apart?”
“...being torn apart by far too many loyalties that could not possibly live together in the same brain.”
“How was it possible to be afraid and in love... The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle.”
“Do you think if two people liked the same thing, it could bring them closer together?""Certainly... Take classical music, for instance... Two people who shared a love for Beethoven could become very close...""How about TV?”
“...I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”
“You can't put something together again unless you've torn it apart first.”