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The Mouth
Nomi’s cantankerous English teacher. Nomi is constantly at odds with Mr. Quiring, who insists that she write formulaic essays that parrot Mennonite dogma while she wants to create inventive and intellectually complex stories. Mr. Quiring’s constant belittling of Nomi and refusal to recognize her obvious talent demonstrates the difficulty of fitting in to a conservative community as a creative and independent-minded teenager. After discovering a series of letters between Mr. Quiring and Trudie, Nomi learns they had an affair which ended when Trudie returns to Ray and Mr. Quiring threatens to expose her as an adulteress to the town. Just as Mr. Quiring exerts control over Nomi’s written narratives, he tries to determine the course of Trudie’s life. But by leaving the community to forge their own paths, both women eventually thwart him.
Mr. Quiring Quotes in A Complicated Kindness
The A Complicated Kindness quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Quiring or refer to Mr. Quiring. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter One
Quotes
Mr. Quiring has told me that essays and stories generally come, organically, to a preordained ending that is quite out of the writer’s control. He says we will know when it happens, the ending. I don’t know about that I feel that there are so many to choose from.
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Chapter Twenty-Two
Quotes
I turned the paper over and studied a chart titled “Satan Cast Down.” There were different categories linked together with arrows and verses. Rapture, saved dead, unsaved dead, millennium, bottomless pit, lake of fire, beast and false prophet, new heaven, new earth. I tried to follow the complicated system of arrows and timelines.
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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Quotes
Love is everything. It is the greatest of these. And I think that we all use whatever is in our power, whatever is in our reach, to attempt to keep alive the love we’ve felt. So, in a way, the only difference between you and me is that you reached out and used the church—there it was as it always has been, what a tradition—and I stayed at home, in bed, and closed my eyes.
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Mr. Quiring Quotes in A Complicated Kindness
The A Complicated Kindness quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Quiring or refer to Mr. Quiring. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter One
Quotes
Mr. Quiring has told me that essays and stories generally come, organically, to a preordained ending that is quite out of the writer’s control. He says we will know when it happens, the ending. I don’t know about that I feel that there are so many to choose from.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Twenty-Two
Quotes
I turned the paper over and studied a chart titled “Satan Cast Down.” There were different categories linked together with arrows and verses. Rapture, saved dead, unsaved dead, millennium, bottomless pit, lake of fire, beast and false prophet, new heaven, new earth. I tried to follow the complicated system of arrows and timelines.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Quotes
Love is everything. It is the greatest of these. And I think that we all use whatever is in our power, whatever is in our reach, to attempt to keep alive the love we’ve felt. So, in a way, the only difference between you and me is that you reached out and used the church—there it was as it always has been, what a tradition—and I stayed at home, in bed, and closed my eyes.
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