if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Warren Cox, God knew, was no prize; a commercial person, a sales person, the kind of man who said things like "x numbers of dollars". At lunch today, laboriously trying to explain some business procedure, he had said "x number of dollars" three times.

He had won but he didn't feel like a winner.

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.

Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was that certain things be allowed to stay the same?

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.