“We're all dreaming,” Arctor said. If the last to know he's an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected. He wondered how much of the garbage that Donna had overheard he had seriously meant. He wondered how much of the insanity of the day--his insanity--had been real, or just induced as a contact lunacy, by the situation. Donna, always, was a pivot point of reality for him; for her this was the basic, natural question. He wished he could answer.”

“If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.”

“A pastor struggled for years with sexual addiction, eventually becoming so despondent that hospitalized himself. He joined an inpatient group and was mostly silent as others shared.When he decided not to come one day, the leader found he had fallen back into his addiction the previous night. Against every fiber of his instinct, he came back to the group. He shared how much he despised himself and his hypocritical behavior. When he saw that others wept for him, the weight of the secret that piled on the shame was broken. As Ortberg puts it, the man was able to taste the grace he taught about.”

“Gibbons wondered vaguely if he was becoming a morphine addict. He had certainly dosed himself into a stupid on account of the hideous pain resulting from the nurse's insistence that he get up and sit in a chair. He rather thought that being a drug addict would interfere with his career as a police detective, but that didn't seem to matter as much as it had a little while ago.”

“He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.”

“Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?”