Fire Sermon Quotes

“C. S. Lewis says that if we were able to return to the locus of our nostalgia, the place or person or spot of time in which we experienced joy, we would find only more nostalgia. As far back as we could go—a view from a childhood window, patterned light on a nursery wall—we would find only an unsatisfied desire that is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. An indication not of the illusion of our existence, but of its ultimate reality elsewhere. A home we once knew but can’t quite remember, to which we will someday return.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“Raised in love, money, and the certainty of God’s favor—money the indication of God’s favor, an idea so insidious she won’t recognize it till she’s in her forties.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“the stance of friends (side by side looking ahead to a shared horizon) versus lovers (side by side looking at one another)”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“And because I only know arousal within love—because I’ve never separated emotion from body—is my pattern to create a pretend love first, over and over, in order to feel desire, and desirable?)”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“The safe way to let yourself fall in love with someone who isn't your spouse: imagine the life you might have together after both your spouses have passed away.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“What if you woke one day to discover the corpse of Christ has been identified definitively? Or that an irrefutable, airtight scientific study had been devised to disprove the existence of God, and the study had - beyond any conceivable doubt - proved he did not exist? What would you feel?

Relief”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“What if you woke one day to discover the corpse of Christ has been identified definitely? Or that an irrefutable, airtight scientific study had been devised to disprove the existence of God, and the study had - beyond any conceivable doubt - proved he did not exist? What would you feel?

Relief”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“What if you woke one day to discover the corpse of Christ has been identified definitely. Or that an irrefutable, airtight scientific study had been devised to disprove the existence of God, and the study had - beyond any conceivable doubt - proved he did not exist? What would you feel?

Relief.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“That summer we fell in love and decided to get married. When I got back to Cleveland we had an argument over the telephone. Something silly, I don't remember what. But I was rude. I insulted him and hung up. I was too proud to be the one to call back and apologize; I wanted him to call first. I waited a year but he never called. I married your grandpa Jack to spite Don, and when Jack died so young, I didn't remarry - not because, as I always told your father, I could never love anyone as much as I loved Jack, but because I hoped Donald and I might someday find one another again. Which of course we never did.

Well, my darling, now you know. I embroidered one hankie a month the year I waited for the telephone to ring. I should like it very much if you kept them. Perhaps they'll remind you to always be the one to call back first.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“I walked under the arch—Empire State Building in front, Freedom Tower behind—glorious to be here, on this day, some new beat in my vascular system, an anticipatory cadence that matched the wider pulse of traffic and construction noise. Life, life. Manhattan was saying it. In the interstices between tragedies, the spaces between the arrowing buildings, the rush of air in alleyways and tunnels, breezes across rooftops, life. So much sweat and energy absorbed by the inanimate, I thought, if you removed every human from this island the stones would cry out. Faulkner said the East and Middlewest—New York, Chicago—are young because they’re alive, the South old because it’s dead. Killed by the Civil War. Maybe that was what I felt. I’d come up from Nashville to find myself among the living.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“What if it's the acquisition you're in love with, not the person? What if your so-called love for James, once exhausted, begins to dissipate, then transfers itself to the next in line?”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“You're my agenda - the day the light changed, the air turned liquid.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“... though she knows it isn't the word she should say, not the word her best self would say - she doesn't know Thomas, if he's the right one for this moment - but right now, best self be damned.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

“A woman becomes more attractive as she ages only if she’s married, a male professor once told her. It means you have something another man wanted, and still wants. It’s single women who don’t age well.”
― Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon