“I hate alliterative names. They suck.”

“I thought I was over him! So why did my heart still rip? Why did I still feel this sorrow? I got this strange sensation that God was with me. And he was angry. He was very angry--not at me and not at Jack. God was angry at the pain I was going through. I wondered if that was why God hated sin, because of the destruction it caused. For a moment I felt awe for a God who loved me enough to hate the things that hurt me without hating me for causing them.”

“There's a very simple reason why quality relationships are scarce: we live in a fallen world, and it sucks.”

“If I never got to make a living doing what I loved, I'd still do it--for fun and for free.”

“It often felt like God had merely let me into a foyer where I could hear others playing my note in another room, with no way to get to the music. And that's really what I wanted to do. I wanted to play my note. I wanted to do the thing that made me feel alive.”

“Just say it: I'm angry and no one will like me. God: No, I will not say that. But don't you think we ached for you to find a love you could share your whole life with? I used your teachers to encourage you creatively when the church could not... I worked with whatever I got my hands on. Can you see that?”

“I remembered something Father Michael said to me a the monastery. 'The human soul is meant to expand. Things that once captured your heart may no longer be able to contain it.”