You have to go where the book leads you.

What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common.

I win, you win. You win, I win. The gun, I win. The fruit, you win. I win, you win.

I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

The good folks mostly win, courage usually triumphs over fear, the family dog hardly ever contracts rabies: these are things I knew at twenty-five, and things I still know now, at the age of 25 x 2. But I know something else as well: there's a place in most of us where the rain is pretty much constant, the shadows are always long, and the woods are full of monsters. It is good to have a voice in which the terrors of such a place can be articulated and its geography partially described, without denying the sunshine and clarity that fill so much of our ordinary lives. (viii)

If life teaches anything at all it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes that there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question.

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.