A man is called a traitor, or liberator. A rich man is a thief or philanthropist. Is one a crusader or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist.

When the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn’t any reclaiming it or revising it.

It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all.

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

He had thought love as a policy made a lot of sense for those who could manage it, and anyone who could manage it belonged in religious life. The rest of us have to struggle with more ordinary love, the common or garden variety: love as a crippling condition. Love as a syndrome.

That's what misbehavior is all about, just a little extra loving being asked for.

Skibbereen have a hard time at [math]; the best that the smartest of them can do with adding two plus two is guessing: three plus one. Correct, sort of, but not always useful.