“I got me slaves and slave-girls.' For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God's?”

“Did you know what would happen next? Did you know and sit there like God, silent, remorseless, useless?”

““That’s all right,” he said. “But when you’re through reading those books, I want you to tell me what you get out of them.” That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this?”

“How many times did Jesus pray or how many times did he bow in private before God?”

“Know what we did, Lucy? You and me? We spent our whole lives yearning. Isn't that the God damndest thing?”

“Is God happy with your music? You see God loves music. God invented music. But Satan has invented some ungodly music you shouldn't listen to. Someone asked me one time Hovind, do you know what you get when you get when you play country music backwards? I said, "No." You get your wife back, you get your dog back, your pickup truck back, and you get out of jail. God created them male and female. Did you know that God invented marriage and the family and sex? He invented the whole thing, and he wants it to be wonderful? So He put some rules down; boys don't touch the girls until you are married to them. Now if you don't want to touch them then stay away from me. I saw your kind at San Francisco. God put the rules down. He put the rules down, because he wants the best for you.”

“To ask what God did before the Creation assumes that God is locked in time like we are. If God is limited by time, He is not God! Time is God.”

“You and I are created for transcendence, laughter, caring. God deliberately did not make the world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God.”

“Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?”

“All God’s giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.”