Then he smiled into her eyes and asked, in the dry academic tones of an astronomer discussing a theoretical point with a colleague, 'How long do you … - Mary Doria Russell

"She had challenged him on this point one night at Anne and George's, inhibitions weakened by Ronrico: "Explain this Mass to me!"

There was a silence as he sat still, apparently looking at the dinner plates and chicken bones. "Consider the Star of David," he said quietly. "Two triangles, one pointing down, one pointing up. I find this a powerful image — the Divine reaching down, humanity reaching upward. And in the center, an intersection, where the Divine and human meet. The Mass takes place in that space." His eyes lifted and met hers: a look of lucid candor. "I understand it as a place where the Divine and the human are one. And as a promise, perhaps. That God will reach toward us if we reach toward Him, that we and our most ordinary human acts — like eating bread and drinking wine — can be transformed and made sacred.

Dust rises at every step, fine as flour. It is dried river silt, that dust. Add water, and the soil is so fertile that you could plant a pencil and harvest a book.

But, Jimmy! What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those aren’t human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.