“It has been my repeated experience that when you say to life calmly and firmly….”I trust you; do what you must,” life had an uncanny way of responding to your need.- ”

“In anyone's life there can be only a few such moments - moments when a long, ringing hush fills your hearing, the world stands still as if under a magic spell, and thoughts and feelings course freely through your being, traversing the whole of eternity in the duration of a minute, so that when time resumes and you return from whatever nameless, dazzling void you briefly inhabited, you find yourself changed, changed irrevocably, and from then on, whether you want it or not, your life flows in a different direction. This was such a moment for me.”

“It’s…The only way I can get on with my life is by forgetting what went on before. Dave used to tell me that I didn’t have control over what the bastard of my father did to me, and that he’d been punished for it, and I might as well concentrate on the rest of my life, because over that…I had some control and I could decide what to do. I could change it over; I could become anything I wanted if I just tried hard enough.”

“) “Do you hear his voice as you hear me? Is it a voice outside your head?”“It’s difficult to explain. It isn’t a voice like anything I’ve ever heard before. It isn’t a man or a woman, it’s God.”“How do you know?”“Because the voice says so. And I believe it.”“Does it talk to you or does it talk about you or others?”“It talks to me.”“Does it call your name?”“Yes…It says something like: “Cain, listen. There’s something I want you to tell the others. Tell them they must love themselves. Tell them they are beautiful.””“Who are the others?”“Black people.”“You mean God is talking to the black people through you.”“I mean God is black.”

“You must have been working very hard here, with so few distractions.”Mary’s eyes darkened and she looked away.“Not quite as much as I hoped for. At times the loneliness and the unanswered questions can get overwhelming, like very loud voices echoing inside my head, just asking ‘why’ ‘who’ and making me think about my wasted life.”

“I thought part of the idea of having therapy was putting one in touch with his or her feelings. And don’t give me all that about transference, and counter-transference and all that. I know what I feel. And it has nothing to do with all that. And you also feel for me. And if you don’t know that, then maybe it’s you who needs to have therapy to gain a better knowledge of yourself.”

“What do you think of Cain’s affirmations?”“He never told a lie. If he says that God talks to him, he is convinced that God is talking to him.”“Do you believe he is a saint?”“God only knows, and never better said. He might be, but again, I have my own taste on the matter. I’m not keen on perfection, especially when it’s dressed up like hardness. I prefer the cracked plate, the slightly blunt spear…”“The imperfect human being.”“Yes. The gloriously imperfect human being.”