I was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to me that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die.

There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever.

Sometimes the clouds weren__ weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn__ mean it wasn__ scary, or that I wasn__ still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I__ be alright.

For every thinking and reflecting man the existence of evil is a riddle he cannot escape.

You can never escape God's Grace because as you run from it, you run to it.

The attraction of reading is that it allows you to live, for a few hours, as someone else__rants you access to their head, their thoughts, their secrets.