If anything could prove the existence of the soul, he thought, it was the utter emptiness of a corpse. - Mary Doria Russell

In science, all sensibly phrased questions are at least potentially answerable, while answers to the questions of faith are, by their very definition, unknowable. With The Sparrow, I hoped to show that both kinds of questions are worth asking, and worth thinking deeply about.

"You ever hear that old joke about the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building?" D.W. asked her. "Yeah. All the way down, you could hear him say, ‘So far, so good. So far, so good. So far, so good.’ That is George’s life story in a nutshell."

"there are still times when the thief I started out to be feels more authentic to me than the priest I’ve been for decades. To be pulled out of a slum and educated is to be an outsider forever — " He stopped talking, deeply embarrassed. Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid for their education: the inevitable alienation from your uncomprehending family, from roots, from your own first person, from the original "I" you once were.