“Before I met the Jesuits, I’d never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics.”

“Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.”

“If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you.”

“Once he had drawn first blood, his war against the property of the state lost all its moral resonance.”

“I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.”

“I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.”

“She was one of those Southerners who were aware from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”