“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.”

“I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.”

“You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing.”

“I think of John saying thatWharton killed the Detterick twins with their love for each other, and that it happens every day, all overthe world. If it happens, God lets it happen, and when we say "I don't understand," God replies, "I don'tcare.”

“John's eyes turned to me...I saw no resignation in them, no hope of heaven, no drawing peace. How I would love to tell you that I did. How I would love to tell myself that. What I saw was misery...fear, incompletion and incomprehension. They were the eyes of a trapped and terrified animal. (The Green Mile/Paul Edgecomb character)”

“When I look back on that time, it’s with the strangest stew of emotions: love, longing, terror, horror, regret, and the deep sweetness only those who’ve been near death can know. I think it’s how Adam and Eve must have felt. Surely they looked back at Eden, don’t you think, as they started barefoot down the path to where we are now, in our glum political world of bullets and bombs and satellite TV? Looked past the angel guarding the shut gate with his fiery sword? Sure. I think they must have wanted one more look at the green world they had lost, with its sweet water and kind-hearted animals. And its snake, of course.”

“We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other ... except through faith.”