The smaller the man, the larger his power fantasies. - Parke Godwin

Smart eats, stupid starves.

You must have been an evangelical."
"Tabernacle of the Born Again Savior," Charity owned with wistful pride. "Not that it helped a whole lot."
"Indeed." Jake sank again in his chair. "Tabernacle of the…the more shriveled the existence, the more elaborate the credentials. Virtue measured by what you wouldn't do, at least under scrutiny, and others judged for what they would and got caught at. You don't want Grace, Miss Stovall. You want to get even.

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.