I do remember vividly sometime after puberty when I'd answer the phone at home and the callers began to say, 'Hi, Bill!' That's when I knew Dad and I had the same voice.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
You have to be vigorous. That's the only way you are going to get it because everybody has dreams and everybody has goals, but the only people who achieve them are the ones that go after it and don't take no for an answer.
A married vicar is likely to regard his vocation as a job - a tough and ill-paid one, to be sure - but a priest is seen as a pillar of the community, answerable only to his parishioners and his God, rather than to a wife and children.
We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives. We may not ever find the right answers to how we'll dig ourselves out.
I'm asked all the time, 'Doesn't it feel great to finish the novel?' And the answer to that is, 'No.' It's sort of a loss to stop a 10-year project, which is an imaginary project in the sense that it's a work of my imagination.
When a wave of love takes over a human being... such an exaltation takes him that he knows he has put his finger on the pulse of the great secret and the great answer.
Nowadays, people don't ask you how you are, they say, 'Are you busy?' meaning, 'Are you well?' If someone actually does ask you how you are, the most cheerful answer, of course, is a robust 'Busy!' to which the person will reply 'Good!'
The one thing I seek above all else is understanding. Sometimes I'm so frustrated and I don't get it. But I'm lucky to have a good management team and people around me who explain things and answer my questions.
How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.
The main battle is to make people realise that doubt is important. Doubt is good. The 'don't know' answer sometimes is the box you should tick, and it's about not being scared about that fact. Even the greatest minds don't know everything.
I think you have to be much more secure and much less angry to trust the simple. You've got to be in a pretty good place to trust those simple, obvious answers and, most important, to use them.
Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, a...
Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't call what you do 'faith.'
We are stronger because we recognize that government isn't the sole answer to the most important questions, and we welcome community and faith based organizations as partners to serve the needs of Florida families.
Everywhere I go I find that people... both leaders and individuals... are asking one basic question, 'Is there any hope for the future?' My answer is the same, 'Yes, through Jesus Christ.'
I've been talking about retiring for years. It's my standard answer to the question, 'What are your future plans?' The truth is, I'll always want to do things that are worthwhile or fun.
Let no one profess to trust in God, and yet lay up for future wants, otherwise the Lord will first send him to the hoard he has amassed, before He can answer the prayer for more.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data.
All you have in comedy, in general, is just going with your instincts. You can only hope that other people think that what you think is funny is funny. I don't have an answer but I just try to plough straight ahead.
I try to write stories that are thrilling and full of mystery and funny all at the same time, stories that raise moral questions but come up with very few moral answers, stories that emotionally touch readers through the characters.
