“And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigningnicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Mald...”

“I believe a family just isnt complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddys nose right around the time they divorced.”

“Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, expo...”

“Limp finally spoke. Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?”

“Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, Diable! Diable! And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of Diable! They were h...”

“Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”

“I can't bear literary snobbery.”

“He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the...”

“They never opened the door which leads to the soul.”

“Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes a...”

“As we stood there, chest high in water, I felt like I was in the middle of my own romance novel.”

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express my...”