Your problem is that you don’t know how to be happy with unhappiness.

Zimmer had gotten used to solitude, what Stein might have called being happy with his unhappiness.

Those who grow up being told they’re worthless start to believe it. When someone thinks they don’t deserve happiness, it becomes easier to sabotage it than to live with it. They never admit this, especially to themselves. But they always shoot the albatross.

This is your school, Davidek. Your life, your place in the world – a bunch of blank pages. You got to fill it up with what you want.

You know a whole lot about romance for a guy who spent the night standing alone by the trash.

The things we surrender to when we’re young, we keep surrendering to the rest of our lives.

His footsteps caught the worried attention of the old couple. There was another door.

The kids called him Father Pimp.

Stein stepped in front of other people’s bullets. He let himself absorb the worst the world threw at the people he cared about. Maybe that did make him strange or crazy; Davidek didn’t know anyone else like that.

His Friday-night poker buddies would tease the priest, “Ah, better go to confession, Father!” And he would close his eyes and say: “I forgive myself.