“Cha-Cha favored short, earnest prayer, and he often wondered what took others so long., It had something to do with excess supplication, he suspected. He never presented a long list of specific req...”

“Everybody else cain't be wrong all the time. Sometimes it's gotta be you.”

“You're worried about her forgiving you...but you need to be worrying about why you're acting up in the first place.”

“A woman without no options is waitin for a man to come by an ruin her.”

“The truth, when finally revealed, is sticky like wet dough. The majority of it stays in place as one handles it, but pieces break off and adhere, making certain facts seem larger, more portentous, ...”

“You got a child to feed and a life to get on with.”

“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”

“I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course...”

“It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mu...”

“As hard as we strive, man remains a perfect imperfect being.”

“People were crazy with pain and secrets.”

“Its not like I planned it. I never woke up from some rosy dream and said, Okay, world, today Im gonna spaz.”

“Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that t...”

“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”

“Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a persons life, from cradle to t...”