“A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition. -Jose Bergamin, author (1895-1983)”

“Happiness is always a coincidence.”

“A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he displaces.”

“To light one candle to God and another to the Devil is the principle of wisdom.”

“To be ready to fail is to be prepared for success.”

“The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.”

“As long as there have been women." Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.”

“In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.”

“I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished...”

“The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated.”

“I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.”

“Told often enough that they are the source of sin, women may well begin feeling guilty as they accept the necessity for penance. Taught effectively enough that they are irrelevant to the important ...”

“Sometimes salvation is found in agony.”

“There is no repentance where a man can talk lightly of sin, much less where he can speak tenderly and lovingly of it.”

“Grace has as much to say about endings as it does about beginnings.”