Sometimes I freeze in front of the canvas, full of the knowledge that if I keep painting, sooner or later I will fail her.

Why would a man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to feel himself to be nothing more than a speck of human dust?

There is nothing wrong with you. God asks the most of those he loves best.

It was like love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: it has been complicated, and therefore perfected, by what time had done to it.

The smoothest way is sometimes full of stones.

The [bird's] nest with its streamers was a final unbidden touch: It was what human hands had not brought to the building, and could not remove. It was like love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: It had been complicated, and thereby perfected, by what time had done to it.

Varian sat silent for a moment, his hands between his knees. "All my life I've enjoyed perfect privilege," he said. "American, rich, Protestant, Harvard-educated. I could walk down the street anywhere and feel, God help me, like a master.

This is the Centre Americain de Secours. What is more American than wild hope?

I'm not named after the character,' she said. 'I'm named after the entire opera.

I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another.