Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something?

Her sanity was a fragile thing, a butterfly cupped in her hands, that she carried with her everywhere, afraid of what would happen if she let it go-or got careless and crushed it.

Longhaired preachers come out every night, Tryin' to tell us what's wrong and what's right. But when asked about something to eat, They will tell you in voices so sweet. You will eat (You will eat!) By and by, (By and by!) In that glorious land in the sky. (Way up high!) Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die. (That's a lie!)

She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe.

The soul may not be destroyed. The soul goes on forever. Like the number pi, it is without cessation or conclusion. Like pi it is a constant. Pi is an irrational number, incapable of being made into a fraction, impossible to divide from itself. So, too, the soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you.

Innocence ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Innocent little kids rip the wings off flies, because they don’t know any better. That’s innocence

Already, though, she understood the difference between being a child and being an adult. The difference is when someone says he can keep the bad things away, a child believes him.