“After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation--a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man's razor had cut them.”

“He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

“I knew, of course, that Americans are embarked on a new direction in seeking solutions for their own health problems. But I had no idea of the strength and pervasiveness of this quest at all strata of society. It was inspiring to talk to people from all walks of life who had developed their own personal health agendas, expending enormous energy to find alternative treatments when they felt mainstream medicine had failed them by providing ineffective treatments or treatments that carried more risk than they wanted to take.”

“They killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last. Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones — the ones who had been there enough years to have maimed, mutilated, maybe even buried her — kept watch over the others who were still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back.”

“We feel society would best be served, not so much by a pill for intellect or sexuality, but by one for compassion. A medicine for altruism. Perhaps we have one.”

“In my opinion, the strongest evidence of his sinlessness is that, if one had sinned, unless one were vicious, one would never let others think one sinless.”

“Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.”

“With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.”

“Everybody's got a secret Sonny,
Something that they just can't face.
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it;
They carry it with them every step that they take.
Till some day they just cut it loose.
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down
Where no one asks any questions,
Or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town.”

“He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.”