“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.”

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

“the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of braille.”

“I look at you and see
my life that might have been
your face just ghostly in the smoke.
They're setting fire to the cornfields
as you're taking me home.
The smell of burning fields
will now mean you and here.”

“And therefore you must know that you can forfeit the grace and help of God by your willful sinning or negligence, though you cannot, without grace, turn to God. If you will not do what you can, it is just with God to deny you that grace by which you might do more.”

“Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. Effort is action. Earning is attitude. You have never seen people more active than those who have been set on fire by the grace of God.”

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

“The purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.”

“It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrongs you saw on every side, struggling after something better and higher and sympathizing with the poor and weak, that I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a young gentleman satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get on well in society.”

“If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.”