“It was a wonderful life. To have a stage play right in this room, with real people acting real parts.”

“In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“While most people took family for granted, he [Father Tim] took it for grace.”

“Why can't life always be lived under the stars,' she said, 'with great music and family and friends?”

“... for fog was merely a cloud that wasn't too smitten with itself to visit terra firma.”

“Professor Morgan had called [Dooley] 'a lad of few words.' That wasn't true. There were words spilling around in him all the time. Too many words. His problem was organizing them.”

“We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma ...”

“If only it were possible to love without injury fidelity isnt enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body...”

“She looks at the swings, and I can see shes imagining what theyd look like if the kids werent there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away,...”