Sin is absence of God. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sin is absence of God. Nothing more, nothing less.

If God resides anywhere ... surely he shelters behind barricades of pure chance.

Grief and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole-corrosive, like seawater, scented with the rich stench of ordure and corruption, and carrying with it hard, abrasive shards of grief.

You can tell nothing from a man's appearance, nothing except the depths of your own prejudice.

I was a boarding school product from the age of eight, and I hated it. Though I do have a theory that boarding school is good training for writers because its so desperately lacking in privacy: you make space for yourself by having an interior life.

The speed of the human mind is remarkable. So is its inability to face the obvious.