The Good Thief: A Novel

"Possessing the book had made what happened inside the pages somehow belong to him."

Ren steals The Lives of the Saints from Father John's office and is later caught by Brother Joseph. Brother Joseph, however, allows Ren to keep the book after doing penance in the form of prayer. He seems to intuit that the stories of the saints will benefit Ren more than the punishment he will receive for returning it. 

"I told them what they wanted to hear so they'd give it to us."

Through his years of experience, Benjamin has become an adept confidence man, particularly when it comes to verbal manipulation. He has a gift for quickly coming up with stories to both get what he wants and get himself out of dangerous situations. Later, Ren will use this gift to buy himself time with Silas McGinty. 

"'This isn't stealing,' said Benjamin. 'It's borrowing, with good intent.'" 

This quote provides a framework within which Tinti asks the reader to consider theft. She presents theft as a moral gray area which can sometimes be justified and forgiven.

"Most of the time I can look at a person and see their whole life."

Benjamin has spent years as a confidence man and thief, perfecting his gifts of perception to con people out of their money, or whatever else Benjamin might need. He uses this “gift” on Father John, the farmer, and McGinty, among others, in order to get what he wants or needs. 

"One day you're going to sell your soul." 

Benjamin says this to Tom after learning that he sold their extra shovel to buy a bottle of whiskey. Tom lives beholden to his alcoholism and Benjamin fears Tom won't have boundaries when it comes to keeping himself drunk. This quote also foreshadows Ren's deal with Dr. Milton, in which Ren promises the doctor his body after he dies, which can be viewed as a step away from selling one's soul.

"At times Ren felt like he was reading fragments of his own dreams[…]"

Ren feels this way when he reads The Deerslayer, a book he steals from a bookstore when he's with Benjamin. Even without Benjamin's guidance, Ren seems to have an active imagination, capable of concocting stories as rich as Benjamin's. 

"He's already one of us."

When Benjamin adopts Ren, it's unclear whether he knows about Ren's penchant for theft. Tinti also implies that theft runs in the Nab family, as Ren seems to take after his father, Benjamin, without having been raised by him. 

"GOD'S TOO BUSY TO GO AROUND PUNISHING LITTLE BOYS."

Mrs. Sands, having lost her hearing after an accident with a gun as a girl, shouts when she speaks. In this instance, she brings up Ren's constant fear, beat into him by Father John: that God will punish every offense. Mrs. Sands, though, does not believe this.

"He could feel God's eye upon him, like a pointed stick at the back of his neck."

Ren does not take his Catholic upbringing lightly. Even after leaving Saint Anthony's and the rituals of Catholicism behind, Ren carries the threat of punishment by God with him. It never stops him, though, from participating in Benjamin and Tom's criminal activities.

"You're lucky to me, did you know?"

Before Benjamin's true relationship to Ren gets revealed, Benjamin treats Ren more like a tool or talisman than a son. Even after the truth comes out, Benjamin does not seem to have much paternal inclination towards Ren, beyond knowing it's best for him to leave Ren in a stable situation with Mrs. Sands.

"It was as if the blade was cutting into his own body."

Ren often seems to feel things empathically or intuitively through his amputation scar, including anxiety and pain. When he sees one of McGinty's hat boys cutting the bartender's hand off, Ren's reaction seems to foreshadow both the hat boys' relationship to Ren and learning of McGinty's amputation of Ren's hand. 

"It's a shame to lose your fellows."

Tom's regret and guilt over his best friend's suicide haunts him to the point that he spends the rest of his life in a state of drunken criminality. Tom attempts to make atonement for the suicide by adopting Brom and Ichy, Ren's friends from Saint Anthony's. 

"There would be no more bargaining with God. He was into hell now for sure."

Ren's conflicted relationship with Catholicism plays out over the novel's course. Ren seems to think that certain sins are worse than others but that there are some, like murder, that cannot be forgiven with any amount of repentance.

"You just can't go around taking care of people." 

Benjamin's life philosophy explains in part why he never went to find Ren before he did. He tries to impart this philosophy to his son but Ren doesn't seem to agree, as he takes care of the people in his life, including Dolly, Mrs. Sands, and the twins.

"I'm not digging up the dead."

Even criminals have limits, as Ren's belief in the varying severity of sin reflects. In this case, Dolly, a self-confessed unregretful murderer-for-hire, refuses to dig up bodies—something Benjamin nor Tom, both of whom judge Dolly for his murders, have no problem doing.

"Eventually a kind of numbness takes over, and you find that you can do anything."

While Dr. Milton says this in reference to seeing a dissected cadaver, the sentiment applies to all the unsavory deeds committed by the novel's characters. Dolly, Benjamin, Tom, and the hat boys have all committed so many violent crimes that they have become jaded to them, and can perform them without thinking about the consequences thereof. 

"He was not empty, not yet, despite everything he felt missing."

After promising his dead body to Dr. Milton, Ren experiences a feeling of regret but has also just discovered his true identity: he is the son of Margaret McGinty and Benjamin Nab. This newfound sense of self gives Ren a feeling of fulfillment, despite missing a hand and a proper family. 

"I always thought it was an appropriate name for the place."

Here, Sister Agnes refers to Saint Anthony's, the Catholic orphanage Ren and the twins lived at until being adopted. As patron saint of lost things, Saint Anthony provides both an appropriate name for a place where lost children live and serves as an apt symbol for the novel's main theme.

"With every step Ren told himself he was not like Benjamin."

Before learning Benjamin is his father, Ren wants to distance himself from Benjamin's sense of callous selfishness. Ren would rather be close with friends he considers his surrogate family than maintain distance from them so he can leave at any time, as Benjamin does. 

"All the penance Ren had neglected to say for the past eight months came back to him now." 

Despite being away from Catholicism, Ren feels its mores and rituals moving through his life. His actions since leaving the orphanage, including helping Benjamin and Tom with their crimes, give Ren a sense of guilt that can only be resolved from confessing, even if it's to Dolly's dead body instead of a priest. 

"It proves she meant to take his name."

As an orphan, Ren clung to a scrap of fabric embroidered with what he thought was his name, “Ren.” However, as he finds out, the collar has deeper significance in that the N stands for Nab, meaning that his mother, Margaret, intended for Ren to have his father, Benjamin's, last name. 

"As if all he had to do to make something happen was to say it out loud."

Ren feels this sense of magic after Benjamin confirms he is Ren’s father. Though this statement holds a similar weight to Benjamin's prior stories told to dupe unsuspecting people, Ren realizes that it's the truth.

“‘We've been lost,’ said Ren.”

In answer to Mrs. Sands's question for him and the twins, Ren responds with a vague though poignant answer. In a literal sense, the boys have been lost after their assault by McGinty; in a metaphorical sense, they've been estranged from their families. Now, though, with Mrs. Sands and Tom as surrogate parents, they appear to be found.