“Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department.”

“She sounds the way bananas taste.”

“I'll wager at the end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone - just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”

“He left soon afterwards, leaving her alone in the dark room, illuminated time to time by shocking leaps of heat lightning, and she thought, now it will rain, and it never did, and she thought, now he will come, and he never did. She lighted cigarettes, letting them die between her lips, and the hours, thorned, crucifying, waited with her, and listened as she listened: but he was not coming.”

“There's the one and only T.C. There was nobody like me before, and there ain't gonna be anybody like me after I'm gone...”

“My, how foolish I am! You know what I've always thought? I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are, just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”

“But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.”