“They were words that came out of nothing, but they seemed to him somehow significant. He muttered them over again.”

“The speeches! They were filled with borrowed things--borrowed over and over again until the words were nothing more than a series of clichés.”

“Seeing that my words had done absolutely nothing to pull North from whatever depths he was clinging to, Owain did what came naturally. He smacked North upside the head hard enough to send him sprawling into the window. And when it seemed that North would turn around and return the favor, Owain hit him again, harder.”

“And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it's probably because I'm looking at them in the light of what came later...”

“He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.”

“...when he kneels at other times and prays or meditates or tries to achieve a Big-Picture spiritual understanding of God as he can understand Him, he feels Nothing — not nothing, but Nothing, an edgeless blankness that somehow feels worse than the sort of unconsidered atheism he Came In with.”