Power travels in the bloodlines, handed out before birth.

To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.

...Grandpa's mind had left us, gone wild and wary. When I walked with him I could feel how strange it was. His thoughts swam between us, hidden under rocks, disappearing in weeds, and I was fishing for them, dangling my own words like baits and lures.

What men call adventures usually consist of the stoical endurance of appalling daily misery.

I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in edgewise, grew discouraged, and traveled on.

What is this life but the sound of an appalling love.

In order to purify yourself, you have to understand yourself, Father Trais went on. Everything out in the world is also in you. Good, bad, evil, perfection, death, everything. So we study our souls.