“The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. But let’s just assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I’d gong up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I’d circled the globe. How would I know?”

“I would like to tell them, the graduates, all of this, and I know that if we thought they would not be embarrassed by hearing it, we would all be telling them about how proud we are of them and how much we believe in them and their future. But again maybe we don't have to tell them; maybe they know. Maybe they can tell just by seeing the love in our eyes today.”

“This was just one night, one chance to vary and see where it took me. The fireflies were probably already out: maybe it wasn’t just a season or a time but a whole world I’d forgotten. I’d never know until I stepped out into it. So I did.”

“Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t.”

“Oh, I loved Mr. Moffet! He was WONDERFUL! He’d given me hope! I felt fearless once again, and I could clearly see it had always been fear that had kept me dammed up all these years. Fear of sin, fear of hell, fear of what people might think of me, fear of … of … I didn’t quite know how to say or even think all these thoughts I was having, and yet… it was like I was now so excited with all these thoughts racing around inside my brain that I was on fire. Maybe I wasn’t really stupid after all. Maybe I’d just been misled all these years from the very beginning. OH, A FIRE FOR WANTING TO LEARN ALL I COULD LEARN WAS NOW BURNING INSIDE ME!”

“You just have to keep driving down the road. It's going to bend and curve and you'll speed up and slow down, but the road keeps going.”

“Some men go a lifetime and never have their kid blow up a car, but I have a daughter who's knocked off three cars and burned down a funeral home. Maybe that's some kind of record.”

“I squandered so much opportunity and support and rarely tried my best at anything. God knows I do not deserve the things I had, maybe because he knew I would be sacrificing all of it in the end, or maybe this is just the final squander. Who knows.”

“I've always been so apathetic. I figured okay, maybe the world is going to fall down around me. Now I feel… maybe that's motherhood, too. I want to make a better world, I want to make sure she has some place to walk around.”

“You think this is going to work? This peaceful summit thing?”
“Sure,” I said. After a second, I added, “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“We’re down to maybe now?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”