It struck me, sharp and hard, that I had been given so many chances to save my soul that my entire life had been constructed around these chances! That was my nature - going from temptation to temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed.

Being liberated means reading what you want to read, and fantasizing about what you want to fantasize about.

Thank God he killed the guy. Oh, now, wait a minute. What kind of a prayer was that!

It's not so," I said. "And how long do you think it will sustain you, feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No one with you?

We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?

Whipping is fifty percent show and noise.

Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.