Quotes from Denise Giardina

I have traveled outside the mountains, but never lived apart from them. I always feared mountains would be as jealous, as unforgiving, as any spurned lover. Leave them and they may never take you back. Besides, I never felt a need to go. There is enough to study in these hills to last a lifetime.

Every way I turned the lush green peaks towered over me. Had it been winter or spring, they would have been iron gray or dappled with pink and white dogwood, sarvis, and redbud, but always they would be there, the mountains, their heights rounded by the elements like relics worn smooth by the hands of reverent pilgrims.

And what more can God do,' he asks, 'then to take on flesh and suffer every humiliation and every fear and every pain that humanity suffers? What more without destroying human freedom?

Kings can choose other than to sin. They can choose death instead.

Ain't you interested in bettering yourself?" "'Bettering yourself.' Now there's a phrase for you. You think your brother is a better man now than he was when he was hoeing corn?" "He's happier." "That ain't the same thing. He's happy at everybody's else's expense. Progress is always at somebody's expense. Hit means putting everything in order till they's no room to breathe. Progress means cleaning everything up. But I like things dirty.