Should I push him or should I throw him?" Howie asks. "Do what comes naturally," I yelled back. "I don't know," he says. "This is a very unnatural thing.

I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

Anger is only our friend when we know its caliber and how to aim it.

Touch is a freaky thing when you're not used to it. It makes you feel all kinds of things.

...And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the convergence of the wrong, of the right, and of the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep...For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of a doubt, which is which.

He also keeps his silence when Bible passages become shredded to justify unwinding, and kids start to see the face of God in the fragments.

So much of my life had been under tight control. So much of Quinn's life had been wild insanity. What we needed now was both: a directed burst of controlled insanity.