Our Lady of the Lost and Found

Some quotations from "Our Lady of the Lost and Found" by Diane Schoemperlen. For more quotations see my review of the book.

"Where do they go, I wonder, all those facts we once knew, those memories we once treasured, those truths we once believed in, those people we once loved and now don't?"
"I recently read that, although in most countries, virginity was historically considered the most important requirement for a young bride, in Hungary, a girl was not deemed eligible for marriage unless she could make strudel dough so thin that her betrothed could read the newspaper through it."
"He (St Anthony) is the friendly finder of car keys, earrings, mittens, hats, money, wallets, homework, husbands, gloves. Anthony is, Mary said, the restorer of lost hopes, lost dreams, lost souls, the shining beacon for all those who have lost their way."
"When the list of deadly sins was first drawn up in the late fourth century by Evagrios of Pontus, it included eight sins, not seven, and one of them was sadness. In the late sixth century, the list was reduced to seven by Pope Gregory the Great and still sadness remained. It was not until the seventeenth century that the intangible sin of sadness was replaced by the more specific one of sloth."
"It is time now to venture out of the comforting land of either/or opposites and travel into the uncertain territory of both/and.... It is time now to admit that reality is not as simple as we would like it to be and that, given half a chance, it will expand to fill the space available."