“What is humor?' one of their professors had posed, and he had answered, ''nondangerous, unexpectedly inappropriate juxtaposition.”

“Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?"I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completely honest, and before I could speak, honesty and tact had joined hands in my answer. "I have no faith at all," I said, "but sometimes I have hope."I rather think," she replied, "that total annihilation is the most comfortable position."I was shaken. The horse clopped on. The children laughed behind us.When I die," she said, "I don't expect to see any of my loved ones again. I'll just become a part of all this." She waved her hand at the surrounding countryside. "That's all right with me.”

“What can we do with our stories,' he said, 'but tell them?”

“What, in nature," Kit asked, "is the most beautiful thing you've seen? Or the most terrible?""The Dismals," Giles answered promptly. "A beautiful aberration in the lay of the land--North Alabama. A section mysteriously lowered, strewn with boulders, ferny, mossy, cooler--the vegetation, they say, typical of Canada. There the creek runs clear, but all other Alabama rivers and waterways are muddy with sediment. I even like the name--the Dismals. An eternal place, disjunct with the climate, the time, and its location.""You think being dismal is an attractive association with eternity?" I asked."It is a cool Eden in the Southern summer heat. What's yours, Una?""The Kentucky hills in spring. Layers of pink and white--redbud and dogwood.""And you?" Giles asked Kit."Stars," he said. That was all.”

“Of our pasts we seemed to know all we needed to know. Nothing was concealed, and though nothing was overtly revealed, all was known. In guilt and in forgiveness we counted ourselves equals, and always had. The sun himself envied us.”

“I'm sorry to burden you,' she said. She felt like a crybaby.'What can we do with our stories,' he said, 'but tell them?”

“Yet intact Ahab, back from his first voyage, once said of just such a changeable breeze, This contrast is the way of life itself. All playfully, he added, But were I God, then would every day be invariantly good. Then he asked me if he might be the god of my world.”