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61 " At that moment, everyone walks on the sky. Maybe all great decisions are made without a net,” The Wonder herself had told him. “There comes a time, in every life, when you must let go. "
― John Irving , Avenue of Mysteries
62 " The student and the teacher had contrasting ideas about the sentence, which was: “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. "
63 " It often happens with grown-ups that their tears are misunderstood. (Who can know which time in their lives they are reliving?) "
64 " good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands—you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books. "
65 " There were some very good books in the backseat of the little Volkswagen; good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands—you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books. "
66 " Not every collision course comes as a surprise. "
67 " And Juan Diego had selected this particular book because it was in English; he’d wanted more practice reading English, though his less-than-rapt audience (Lupe and Rivera and the disagreeable dog Dirty White) might have understood him better en español. "
68 " He was asleep—he was still dreaming—though his lips were moving. No one heard him; no one hears a writer who’s writing in his sleep. "
69 " Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan’s projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion. "
70 " What Brother Pepe saw in Edward Bonshaw was a man who looked like he belonged—like a man who had never felt at home, but who’d suddenly found his place in the scheme of things. "
71 " why Edward Bonshaw had been so attached to it? “A glooming peace this morning with it brings”—well, yes, and why would such darkness ever depart? Who can happily think of what else happened to Juliet and her Romeo, and not dwell on what happened to them at the end of their story? "
72 " Treading water, a little dog-paddling—it’s a lot like writing a novel, Clark,” the dump reader told his former student. “It feels like you’re going a long way, because it’s a lot of work, but you’re basically covering old ground—you’re hanging out in familiar territory. "
73 " Lupe was upset that the Japanese honeymooners were wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses; she imagined the young Japanese couples were dying of some dread disease—she thought they’d come to Of the Roses to beg Our Lady of Guadalupe to save them. “But aren’t they contagious?” Lupe asked. “How many people have they infected between here and Japan?” How much of Juan Diego’s translation and Edward Bonshaw’s explanation to Lupe was lost in the crowd noise? The proclivity of the Japanese to be “precautionary,” to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from bad air or disease—well, it was unclear if Lupe ever understood what that was about. "
74 " Father Alfonso and Father Octavio could make Pepe feel as if he were a betrayer of the Catholic faith—as if he were a raving secular humanist, or worse. (Could there be anyone worse, from a Jesuitical perspective?) Father Alfonso and Father Octavio knew their Catholic dogma by rote; while the two priests talked circles around Brother Pepe, and they made Pepe feel inadequate in his belief, they were irreparably doctrinaire. "
75 " Lupe’s language is just a little different,” Juan Diego was saying. “I can understand it. "
76 " You have taught yourself to read English, too,” Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason. “English is just a little different—I can understand it,” the boy told him, "
77 " Now and forever,” Juan Diego said, more confidently. He knew this was a promise to himself—to seize every opportunity that looked like the future, from this moment forward. "
78 " The Solitude Virgin, Lupe said, was “a white-faced pinhead in a fancy gown.” It further irked Lupe that Guadalupe got second-class treatment in the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad; the Guadalupe altar was off to the left side of the center aisle—an unlit portrait of the dark-skinned virgin (not even a statue) was her sole recognition. And Our Lady of Guadalupe was indigenous; she was a native, an Indian; she was what Lupe meant by “one of us. "
79 " As a self-described Guadalupe girl, Lupe was sensitive to Guadalupe being overshadowed by the “Mary Monster.” Lupe not only meant that Mary was the most dominant of the Catholic Church’s “stable” of virgins; Lupe believed that the Virgin Mary was also “a domineering virgin. "
80 " There was a twofold awkwardness attached to Juan Diego’s attempts to have sex with the life-size Guadalupe doll—better said, the awkwardness of Juan Diego’s imagining he was having sex with the plastic virgin. "