“Phil and Hannah had decided that Christian guilt was better than bad math”

“Sometimes you can just feel a person's decency in the same way that sometimes you can intuit a lack of it. Phil had the air of a man who is fully attentively engaged Josh Hannah's first fiance had the air of a man trying not to look at his watch. Phil consistently interested himself in the lives of others Josh talked about himself. Phil looked at my sister with tenderness and humor Josh looked at her as if she were an especially persistent gnat.”

“Anger was better than tears, better than grief, better than guilt.”

“Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.”

“In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.”

“He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”