One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.

People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there.

He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

For the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.

He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him.

Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be.