Julie Orringer quotes:

Sarah had a saying: Der gleichster veg iz ful mit shtainer." "What's it mean?" "The smoothest way is sometimes full of stones.

Why would a man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to feel himself to be nothing more than a speck of human dust?

And what if I fail?" "Ah! Then you'll have a story to tell.

Practice at hunger makes the fast easier.

I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another.

It was like love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: it has been complicated, and therefore perfected, by what time had done to it

There is nothing wrong with you. God asks the most of those he loves best.

The smoothest way is sometimes full of stones.

You will stay up all night reading this brilliant and devastating novel the way you might have with a new best friend in junior high-one whose revelations thrilled and terrified you, and whose raw, hard-earned wisdom remade the way you saw the world. It evokes the genius of Angela Pneumans canonical progenitors: Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy. Lay It on My Heart is a gorgeous, riveting, and unforgettable book.