And what if I fail?" "Ah! Then you'll have a story to tell.

It was like love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: it has been complicated, and therefore perfected, by what time had done to it

There is nothing wrong with you. God asks the most of those he loves best.

Why would a man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to feel himself to be nothing more than a speck of human dust?

I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another.

Practice at hunger makes the fast easier.

And what if I fail?" "Ah! Then you'll have a story to tell.