“I poured on a rainstorm of fire and brimstone as hot as I could, and you know something of what that is. I believe that I never said anything more savage in the pulpit or on the stump.”

“They always said on TV you could do anything you wanted, but here I was trying to do something and it wasn't working. I would never be able to do it.”

“I never said nothing…"
"I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!”

“What do you think it is?"
"It could be anything from a lawn trimmer to a bomb, for all I know."
"I would never build a lawn trimmer," Myrnin said. "What did the lawn ever do to me?”

“So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!”

“I asked you what you wanted and you said you didn't want anything. And I told you I wasn't planning on giving you anything; I was planning on giving you something.”

“I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.”

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

“You can say anything about me; as you please… But I am what I am and that's something that you can never be”

“You see, if I could believe that I shall see and touch him again, I shall not have lost him. And if I have not lost him, I shall never have had a son. Because I am I through bereavement and because of it. I do not know what I was nor what I shall be. But because of death, I know that I am. And that is all the immortality of which intellect is capable and flesh should desire. Anything else is for peasants, clods, who could never have loved a son well enough to have lost him.”