"A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture" (Page 1).

"By no means was she important enough for God to conjure signs and wonders on her account. What had set her apart, briefly, was an outsize and hellish obsession. To stop a thing like that would require a burning bush, a fighting of fire with fire" (Page 25).

"For some reason she thought of Honors English, the great themes: man against man, man against himself. Could man ever be for anything?"(Page 206).

"'Terrible, beautiful, it's not our call,' Ovid said. 'We are scientists. Our job here is only to describe what exists. But we are also human. We like these butterflies, you know?'" (Page 229).

"There were two worlds here, behaving as if their own was all that mattered. With such reluctance to converse, one with the other. Practically without a...