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81 " Don't ever die," Juan Diego had written to Brother Pepe from Iowa City. What Juan Diego meant was that HE would die if he lost Pepe. "
― John Irving , Avenue of Mysteries
82 " There weren’t so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn’t affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it. "
83 " Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. “One: love of dogs,” she started. “Two: to be stars—in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future—” She stopped for a second. “His future, anyway,” Lupe said, pointing to her brother. “His future is in the parrot man’s hands—I just know it is, circus or no circus. "
84 " Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls—they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts. "
85 " Even Clark French’s novels exerted a tenacious and combative goodwill: his main characters, lost souls and serial sinners, always found redemption; the act of redeeming usually followed a moral low point; the novels predictably ended in a crescendo of benevolence. "
86 " never spoke of it. He took the miracle to his grave. All Andrew ever said about the voyage was that a nun had taught him how to play mah-jongg. Something must have happened during one of their games. "
87 " If you want to worry about something, you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you. Like she’s still making up her mind about you. Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you,” the clairvoyant child had told him. "
88 " It was best not to ask Pepe if reading or Jesus had saved him, or which one had saved him more. "
89 " Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things. "
90 " Ad majorem Dei gloriam—to the greater glory of God. "
91 " But Lupe both genuinely worshiped Our Lady of Guadalupe and fiercely doubted her; Lupe’s doubt was borne by the child’s judgmental sense that Guadalupe had submitted to the Virgin Mary—that Guadalupe was complicitous in allowing Mother Mary to be in control. "
92 " Don't grown-ups ever get over things? "
93 " An aura of fate had marked him. He moved slowly; he often appeared to be lost in thought, or in his imagination—as if his future were predetermined, and he wasn’t resisting it. "
94 " And you wouldn’t want to bring her home—at least not to entertain your guests or amuse the children. No, Juan Diego thought—you would want to keep her, all for yourself. "
95 " As a fourteen-year-old, he’d not been old enough to have sympathy for her—for either the child or the adult that she was. "
96 " The chain of events, the links in our lives—what leads us where we’re going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don’t see coming, and what we do—all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious. "
97 " El papa Benedicto XVI había dicho que la pederastia se consideraba normal hasta fecha tan reciente como los años setenta. [...]- Benedicto dijo: "Nada es bueno o malo en sí mismo". Dijo "nada", Clark -repitió Juan Diego a su exalumno-. La pederastia no es "nada"; seguramente la pederastia sí es "mala en sí misma", Clark. "
98 " (A cripple’s life is one of watching others do what he can’t do, "
99 " They were running away from the war in Vietnam, or from what their country had become, Edward Bonshaw said. The Iowan reached out to them—he tried to help them—but most of the hippie boys weren’t religious types. Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls—they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts. "
100 " succubi "