Gilead (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I’ve thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it.

All that is fine, but it’s your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.

My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature.

Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time.

There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.

It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men. So they get themselves drawn into situations that are harmful to them. I have seen this happen many, many times. I have always had trouble finding a way to caution against it. Since it is, in a word, Christlike.