Page 43

I wasn't afraid of him. I had been once; but you can get used to anything in time, you know, and nowadays I paid as little attention to his rages as the inhabitants of Pompeii to the volcano that was one day to extinguish them. Most things, repeated often enough, can become routine; and mine was simply to lock the bedroom door, whatever came, and to keep well out of his way the morning after.

Like his other book I've read, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, this is a really honest account by Don of his thoughts on modern Christian spirituality. He goes into detail on how he lives out his faith compared to how he *should* be living out his faith, who God is, how to love Jesus, and more. Definitely worth a read if you're into getting deeper into your faith, and knowing why you believe what you believe.

Page 218

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. ... I could see it so clearly, and I could feel it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.

There was love in Christian community, but it was conditional love. Sure, we called it unconditional, but it wasn't. There were bad people in the world and good people in the world. We were raised to believe this. If people were bad, we treated them as though they were evil or charity: If they were bad and rich, they were evil. If they were bad and poor, they were charity. Christianity was always right; we were always looking down on someone else.

Page 152

When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn't normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

Pg 132

Their teaching would have me believe I was the good person in the world and the liberals were the bad people in the world. Jesus taught that we are all bad and He is good, and He wants to rescue us because there is a war going on and we are hostages in that war. The truth is we are supposed to love the hippies, the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves.

p46
The thing I loved about Nadine was that I never felt like she was selling anything. She would talk about God as if she knew Him, as if she had talked to Him on the phone that day. She was never ashamed, which is the thing with some Christians I had encountered. They felt like they had to sell God, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it's like they weren't really listening to me, or didn't care, they just wanted me to buy their product.

Page 45

"She hates everybody, Don. She thinks people are out to get her...
"But she was normal at one time, right?" I once asked.
"Yes, she was beautiful and fun. I loved my mom, Don, and I still do. But I hate that her mind has been taken. I hate that I can't have normal interaction with her."

Seeing as I'd love almost anything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, this one didn't disappoint. Classic Holmes, popping out for some air while secretly discovering the true motives of the antagonist, and coming back in time to save the day...with Watson's help, of course. I didn't see the ending coming, as all good detective books should be, and enjoyed the ride along the way.

Though I loved the premise of this one, I wasn't sold on the plot line, or the characters who seemed to lack depth. And the big ending, though thought-provoking, simply made me ask, "what did I just read again?". Overall, if you're into alternate WWII histories, give this one a read.

Though this one wasn't my absolute favorite, I can't deny Hosseini has a way of honest storytelling that makes you feel glad, even if you're reading about sad experiences. Family is the most important part of this book, and the varying sacrifices people make to please themselves and their loved ones are paramount.

Page 287

Paul and I walk Danielle out to her car and they exchange a close hug. Danielle gives me a hug too, but it's one of those "old friend" types of hugs, not like the "I can't wait to see you, my heart is aglow with passionate fire" hug she gave Paul. Oh well. Maybe there's a gal waiting for me in Colorado.

Page 228

I guess I've always hoped that earnestly seeking God would bring joy. And I still believe it does. But it also brings sorrow and anger and hardship. This seems to be part of how God works with people. Even among the saints you see the full gamut of emotion. We learn from the pain of life as well as the pleasure. Perhaps we even learn more from the pain.

Page 218

They'd get a good laugh at my expense, but it wouldn't bother me. The uncomfortable moments in a person's life make great stories down the road. Life would be boring without moments like this.

But I do not want to be a clone of church culture. Not do I want to offend it just to demonstrate my individuality. I want to be what God wants me to be. So I must think scripturally about things...

So what does godliness look like? How does it sound and what does it wear? Does a good Christian girl want a man who is godly, or does she just want a man who wears Dockers and plaid shirts and gets along well with the pastor, good golf game and all?

Page 74

It is as if the church is ashamed to present the Gospel for what it is. We've got to water it down and tiptoe around the complicated passages. It is one thing to be seeker-sensitive and another to be silly.

Pg 50

A true friend; someone who knows me and loves me anyway. You know, like when I'm through putting my best foot forward, she's still there, still the same...But all-in-all, there's got to be some sort of soulmate thing going on. That's gonna take work, I think. There are some people in this world who love their spouse because they provide them with the life they want, and there are others who love their spouse just because they've chosen to.

Page 48

His tone turns mellow. "I guess I'm looking for what any guy is looking for. I want a companion, you know. Just someone to share life with. I want her to be my biggest fan and I want to be her biggest fan, too. I want us to raise kids in a home where they know their parents are in love with each other, with them, and with God. I guess that's all I want."

An honest, thought-provoking and enjoyable read about a couple of friends, an old Volkswagen van, and the American West. Don's view of God and his Christianity are translucent and genuine. And his poetic approach to writing and his humor are good parallels to Paul's deeper, less direct style of communication, which complement each other very well.

Page 201

And yet, after all, the clock is not always ticking. Sometimes it stops and we are happiest. Sometimes -- more precisely, some-not-times -- we find 'the still point of the turning world'. All our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless.

Page 181

Writing a letter is a real form of conversation in which the image of a distant person is held in one's mind. I could not have spoken aloud to thin air with any sense of reality, nor could I now write to her, but then I could really speak to her in letters.

Page 150

At all events, joy flowed between us, the joy that I thought to be pagan joy. After all, for Christians and unbeliever, there is but one spring of joy.

Page 137

I wanted to protest that it was too much; but how could I do that? It's not possible for one Christian to say to another: You love God too much. Nor to say: You are holier than necessary. I couldn't even 'think' such thoughts. They would have been dangerous. I might have seen things. I merely 'felt' a sort of helpless protest.

Page 131

The Christianity we represented was sunny and joyous, with all the room in the world for humour and gaiety, and yet at the same time rigorous and glorious. So we laughed and joked and poured out the wine but challenged their minds and souls.

Page 129

There was perhaps more faith in the Virginian churches than we perceived, faith that was real but inarticulate and not thought about. But we, seeing what looked like apathy in one direction and, in the other direction, watered-down Christianity, began to wonder whether in Protestantism the apostolic faith were not dying.

Page 97-98

It would seem that Christianity requires both emotional and intellectual assent. If there is only emotion, the mind asks troubling questions that, if not answered, might lead to a falling away, for love cannot be sustained without understanding. On the other hand, there is a gap which must be bridged by emotion. If one is suspicious of the upsurge of feeling that may be incipient faith, how is one to cross the gap?

Page 94

The personality of Jesus emerged from the Gospels with astonishing consistency. Whenever they were written, they were written in the shadow of a personality so tremendous that Christians who may never have seen him know him utterly: that strange mixture of unbearable sternness and heartbreaking tenderness.

Page 77

Moreover, the astonishing fact sank home: our own contemporaries could be at once highly intelligent, civilised, witty, fun to be with--and Christian.

Page 73

The moment was utterly timeless: we didn't know time existed; and it contained, therefore, some foretaste, it may be, of eternity.

Page 73

Neither of us spoke, not so much as whispered a word. We were together, we were close, we were overwhelmed by a great beauty. I know it seemed to us that we were completely one: we had no 'need' to speak.

Page 68

What she needed, what we both needed was the sea and the sky, nature, to soothe our souls. So I held her and comforted her, up against something I could not comprehend; but something I would help her fight.

Although it seemed to drag at times, I really enjoyed this one! It paints a wonderful image of love at its most new, as well as a Christlike love found after Christian conversion, and how it is not easy, but o so worth it in marriage. Sheldon's honesty and transparency is greatly appreciated, as is his detailed account of daily life in his Christian walk.

Page 156

They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

Pg 306-307

Now, you just dig them in front..They have worries ... But they need to worry, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, a false really false expression of concern and even dignity and all the time it flies by them and they know it and that TOO worries them NO end. Listen!

Page 326

"Oh, a girl like that scares me" I said. "I'd give up everything and throw myself at her mercy and if she didn't want me I'd just as simply go and throw myself off the edge of the world."

Page 314

Things are so hard to figure when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.

Page 113

...but then they danced down the street like dingldodies and I shambled after as usual as I've been doing all my life after people that interest me, because the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing..but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night.

Page 120-121

I wasn't scared, I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost...I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then that strange red afternoon.

Read this if you have a slight fascination with the original Hipsters, hitchhiking, California, poetry, the Beat Movement, friendship or life in general. This book has all of this and more. Kerouac' writing style is half tongue-in-cheek and half stream-of-consciousness, and does not disappoint.