Keith Ablow

“God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces.”

“Human empathy, while not found on any chart of human anatomy, is the reason we instinctively hurt for our children… it is the reason that one human being’s intensely personal tests and triumphs can be harnessed to the good of countless others.”

“The truth will set you free. Unless you're guilty.”

“Deep down, everyone wants the truth.”

“The bad things don't seem to happen to bad people.'That's because they already did. There's no original evil left in the world.”

“Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn't get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that's okay.”

“We are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed by an alchemy of the soul into addiction, ulcers, strokes, hatred, even war.”

“The irrational thoughts were the ones with the power to burn holes in your gut.”

“Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac.”

“The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.”

“What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?”

“Nothing overdone, nothing racy, which made her all the more alluring.”

“Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.”

“The good guys had to operate on a higher level than the killers--just for society to keep track of who was who.”

“I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow.”