I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.

There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.

My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.

Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.

For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.