You have to start out learning to believe the little lies. "So we can believe the big ones?" Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That's something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

It's the end game that people dread and that's what I'm scared of

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things because. wow, then I could afford much *better* childish things!

Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure.

And what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home, yesno? If you were a boy I'd say are you going to seek your fortune?" "Can't girls seek their fortune?" "I think they're supposed to seek a boy with a fortune.