Jack (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

“I just think there has to be a Jesus, to say ‘beautiful’ about things no one else would ever see. The precious things should be looked to, whatever becomes of the rest of it. I hope that doesn’t sound harsh.”

The knowledge of good. That half of the primal catastrophe received too little attention. Guilt and grace met together in the phrase despite all that. He could think of himself as a thief sneaking off with an inestimable wealth of meaning and trust, all of it offended and damaged beyond use, except to remind him of the nature of the crime. Or he co

The whole congregation would have understood when he said good manners were an excellent beginning, a kind of discipline that could lead to actual virtue, given time.

Miracles leave no trace. He had decided, hearing his father preach on the subject, that they happened once as a sort of commentary on the blandness and inadequacy of the reality they break in on, and then vanish, leaving a world behind that refutes the very idea that such a thing could have happened.

Then he thanked the Lord for the eye of the beholder, that perjured witness.

But shame was a very old habit with him. He had long considered it penitential, payment extracted in the form of steady, tolerable misery, against a debt he would never settle. He was even a little loyal to it, as if it assured him there was justice in the universe.

Jack had noticed many times that anyone with any sort of place in life became, at some point, the exasperated authority.

He did buy a sketch pad and some pencils, thinking he would try to draw her face from memory and expecting to fail at it. Memory would be less engrossing if it were more sufficient.

What she actually said was “You are living like someone who has died already.”