Life continues in its monotonous and petty course. Fortunately, I carry within me a world quite different from the one I live in. (p73) - Marie Vieux-Chauvet

That afternoon, the grandfather had the maid bring the invalid to church. Once he found a seat, he took him on his knees and sent Mélie back to wait on the porch. From his pulpit, the Haitian priest delivered a sermon that displeased him because he spoke of obedience and acceptance not of the laws of heaven but of what passed for law in the kingdom of this world.
"We must learn to submit," the priest was saying. "We must learn to resign ourselves, for nothing happens on earth without God's will."
A few people turned to stare at the grandfather. And for a moment he had the unpleasant feeling that the sermon was directed at him. "Should I, too," he felt like shouting, "Should I, too, resign myself to having my father's grave profaned and his bones dug up?" He knew the priest would reply: "Yes, if such be God's will." And therefore he had gone astray, for rebellion and vengeance swelled within him. Jesus chased the thieves from the Temple with a whip, and my father imitated him. Was be wrong? he wondered. No, and even when he stuck a knife in the back of that incorrigible thief who had managed to bribe the judges and get the law on his side, he was right that time too. After all, since when did a man, a real man, allow what is his to be taken away against his will? And the grandfather wanted to spit in the faces of all these curs, beginning with his own son. He left the church irate, the invalid in his arms. If the Church was on the side of the thieves, he might as well pray at home from now on. And God would in the end understand that the Church had sunk into corruption. (chapter 6)

...she led a dignified and modest life. But society, spiteful and querulous, always seeking sacrificial victims, never forgave her. Her parents themselves had fueled the scandal by punishing her so spectacularly, for fear people would say they weren't raising her right. (p107)

"He lives in sin," my mother explained to me, "and sin is contagious." (p93)