“I could have been stronger,” she said. “I wasn’t enough to keep something so important.”

“There have been moments when I also wasn’t able to attach as much importance to football as it seemed to me I should.”

“Prayers are answered in one of four ways,” she said. “Yes. No. I have
something else in mind. And…”
She paused long enough for my impatience to show. “And what’s the
fourth answer?”
“Wait,” she said.”

“I forgot, over and over, that the fact of my wanting something wasn’t enough to make it happen.”

“It would be one thing if I had been cursed so that everyone I loved would die," said Will. "I could keep myself from loving. To keep others from caring for me--it is an odd, exhausting procedure.”

“She asked me why I always had something flip to say. I said that I didn't know, but having been blessed with the gift, I felt obliged to use it.”

“I think my life would be easier, she said,
if I could just get my selves to agree on something.”

“Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.”

“There," she said. She rocked him back and forth. "There, you foolish, beautiful boy who wants to change the world. There, there. And who could keep from loving you? Who could keep from loving a boy so brave and true?”

“I knew that now—that love wasn’t something you could do away with, no matter how hard you tried.”