The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.

The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.

You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.

The woman I loved died because I did not love her enough - what greater sin is there than that?" (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Fifke and the Angel)

...but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes.

I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns, but not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else — what do they look to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?

He had never missed God or the hope of heaven, but he had dearly wanted confession to rest his mind, Communion to let him touch something beyond Father Krone's dry, shaky hand, and holy water to taste like starlight.