“Hard times and funky living can season the soul, true enough, but joy is the yeast that makes it rise.”

“The uncle ignored Gracie's father. 'In any event,' he went on, 'when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment -- to rot -- it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge.”

“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be the way to make love stay?”

“Every time a person goes to the mall, she loses a little piece of her soul”

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”

“I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.”

“Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, providing it goes wrong enough.”