Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Grace has a grand laughter in it.
Vision sometimes comes in a memory.
Light is constant, we just turn over in it.
A letter makes ordinary things seem important.
You have to live with your mind your whole life.
Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me
It is hardship that makes clear who the "fighters" are.
Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.
There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.
I don't think I could write a novel that wasn't theological.
Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.
Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.
You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.
...not deciding to act would be identical with deciding not to act.
Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true.
You build your mind, so make it into something you want to live with.
For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything.
It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them.
Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that.
When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.
When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.
This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.
Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.
For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers.
That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.
When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.
Salvation was universally considered to be much more becoming in women than in men.
. . . there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving.
There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient
I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone.
I do have an impulse to sort of leverage what I say against something I disagree with.
It's not a man's working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.
We inhabit, we are part of, a reality for which explanation is much too poor and small.
The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out.
I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another.
I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.
That's one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don't let them.
What an embarrassment that was, being somewhere because there was nowhere else for you to be.
If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves.
The Bible for me is holy writ. It's a very straightforward thing, although I am not a literalist.
Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.
It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.
I do assume that a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention.
And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.
Generosity is also an act of freedom, a casting off of the constraints of prudence and self-interest.
The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every art.
I really enjoyed my kids. They were good boys, you know, and interesting. And they didn't wear me out.
A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.
pity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet.