Parke Godwin

"Hell might be a strain, she concluded, but you couldn’t beat it for the new and different or the interesting men."

"I will not comment on your accent. Similes founder, metaphors fail."

"Honor thy stereotypes, the authors of thy thinking, for without them, thou wouldst have to see."

"Woody had more talent than drive, but a musician, even a poor one, was preferable to a fanatic. He could only assault the ear."

"Coyle knew to its core the essence of Charity Stovall, who had lived her twenty years in the lower echelons of Christian belief, a lurid topography with no middle ground. Her theology was banal but rendered in full color, a Caucasian Green Pastures at one end, smoke, fire, pain—the whole Faustian, Exorcist claptrap at the other."

"Countries are just like women. Sooner or later everyone loses their cherry and gets to be just another broad on the block."