If Mitchell was ever going to become a good Christian, he would have to stop disliking people so intensely.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sku was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh.

I know that attaching memories to books may be going out of the world, but while it lasts, it's a strong record of your life.