“Felder, the son of famed U.S. flying ace Milton Felder, executed for treason several years ago, said, “the convention was a success in that no one showed up.”When quizzed about the objectives of the sect, Felder said, “One of the objectives is to not attend any meeting held in this insolent city.”(The mayor of Miami in a news conference later in the afternoon said that Felder was welcome to leave Miami anytime he wished.)”

“The cat jumped out of Willie’s arms and bounded up the stanze.The gallery fell into a hush as the cat crawled through Moses and the Prophets and the reign of David and up through the Old Testament entirely, fixing its claws on the slaying of the Holy Innocents and stopping to consider how far it wished to travel into the Gospels. The Russian priest began to scream again.A spirit-minded guard, interpreting the cat’s movements as an evil sign, fell on his knees and asked forgiveness for his many sins of the flesh.A policeman called to the cat to jump down but the cat seemed content to remain with the dying Innocents.Willie whistled sharply then. The cat turned, hesitated, then leaped down and skittered out of the gallery.Everyone turned to Willie, who stood quite still, holding his arms as if he were still cradling the cat.“Cats—men,” he said in a faraway voice, “need things to hang on. Otherwise, wouldn’t everything fall away?”The Italian word for insane rippled through the gallery.”

“When Willie was a baby, he used to look into the soft almond eyes of his black-gold mother and in those reflecting mirrors of life and the world, he saw that the earth was a splendid lovely planet.”

“In his homilies, this old Jesuit always talked about desire, and how we were connected by our desires. He said the most basic human desire was the desire to be desired by one you desire.”

“I know I should try harder to make her feel necessary in my life. It totally freaked her when I said I didn’t need her anymore. But isn’t that the whole point of growing up? A healthy bird can fly the nest? Roots and wings and all that Hallmarky crap?”

“Tears came to my eyes when I read of a mere boy in one of our eastern cities who noticed a vagrant asleep on a sidewalk and who then went to his own room, retrieved his own pillow, and placed it beneath the head of that one whom he knew not. Perhaps there came from the precious past the welcome words: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’ (Matt. 25:40).”

“It is necessary to prepare, to plan, so that we don't fritter away our lives. Without a goal, there can be no real success. The best definition of success I have ever found goes something like this: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Someone has said the trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never crossing the goal line.”