“She was completely alone in the world. There was no one at all for her. No one in the world who cared whether she lived or died. Sometimes the horror of that thought threatened to overwhelm her and plunge her down into a bottomless darkness from which there would be no return. If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?”

“What hope is there?” I asked. “If even angels fall, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

“You don’t need wings to be an angel.You just need a heart of gold.”

“¿Por qué? ¿Acaso crees que los demonios no podemos sentir afecto? Somos seres racionales y experimentamos emociones complejas. Si los ángeles pueden matar, ¿por qué nosotrso no podemos amar?”

“Inviting angels into your life builds a stronger connection between you and God.”

“I remembered Robyn telling me the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and how they’d survived: when the King chucked them in the furnace and an angel or someone went in with them. The furnace blazed all around them but they didn’t burn.And it did calm me. I don’t know if it was Robyn or an angel or even God himself was in the boot, but I was starting to suspect that whenever I wanted God, he was there. Only not necessarily in the form I wanted, or doing what I wanted…In the pitch of the black boot I clung to the image of a fiery furnace, and it wasn’t the furnace or Hell either.”

“Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched—by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever.” (p.33)”

“I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.”

“You ever seen that painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where God’s reaching out and touching the finger of an angel? That was what it felt like at the moment my lips touched hers. It was more than just a kiss. It was something spiritual.”

“THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINSLaugh, I tell youAnd you will turn backThe hands of time.Smile, I tell youAnd you will reflectThe face of the divine.Sing, I tell youAnd all the angels will sing with you!Cry, I tell youAnd the reflections found in your pool of tears -Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterdayTo guide you through the fears of tomorrow.”

“Well, I never been to much school, you understand, but it seems to me that you’re assuming something you shouldn’t assume… that God sees the world like you do; one thing at a time, from just one spot. Seems to me that he’s supposed to be everywhere, know everything. …Think about that; he knows what you’re feeling, how you’re hurting. Feels my pain, your pain like it was his own. Hell son, the question isn’t how God could care about just one person; question is, how could he not?”

“Two or three angelsCame near to the earth.They saw a fat church.Little black streams of peopleCame and went in continually.And the angels were puzzledTo know why the people went thus,And why they stayed so long within.”

“Your angel cannot protect you against that which neither god nor the devil had made”

“Listen, street punk. You’re a guy, and you’re a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you’re in a gang. But I’ve survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at your knees without a blink. Do you understand?”

“Who, last time I’d checked, was still on our official archenemy list. (Yes, we have to keep a list. It’s kind of sad.)”