“If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?”

“There's nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe.”

“People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that *they* might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.”

“Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.”

“Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.”

“There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.”

“The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.”