“...all the thousands of God's children who have flung themselves, stupid and glorious, over and over, into the best and worst of things, loving whom they should not, seizing what they must not, running where they cannot, falling where there is no one to catch them - how this serves the betterment or edification of the species is not clear; people do it regardless. People have always done it.”

“How the hell did people do this, this emotion-and-forgiveness thing? How did they stand these feelings? She could barely handle it and she had lovely, necessary, reason-for-living drugs to smooth over the rough spots. How did people do this shit sober?”

“Now they were sixtyish and gray and almost as wide as they were tall, and so accustomed to each other's habits that whenever he sneezed, she blew her nose.”

“...a priest is someone willing to stand between a God and a people who are longing for one another's love, turning back and forth between them with no hope of tending either as well as each deserves. To be a priest is to serve a God who never stops calling people to do more justice and love more mercy, and simultaneously to serve people who nine times out of ten are just looking for a safe place to rest. To be a priest is to know that things are not as they should be and yet to care for them the way they are.”

“The only people who get better are people who know that, if they never get better, God will love them anyway.”

“Fuck, she was so sick of herself-herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done? She was sick of being lost.”

“What the hell was the matter with these people? How did they not see that of all the people on the planet, she was probably the least qualified to help them with their emotional problems? It was like asking a dog to do algebra.”