If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a slop...
Something new and unexpected, something hitherto unknown and undreamt of, had taken place in him. He did not so much understand with his mind as feel instinctively with the full force of his emotions that he could never again communicate with these p...
But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park. You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for...or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your c...
All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives yo...
A person is not like a thing that you put down in one place and leave, a person moves, thinks, asks, questions, doubts, investigates, probes, and while it is true that, out of a long habit of resignation, he sooner or later ends up looking as if he h...
The main shift, you see, is from placing at the center of our thoughts to putting there. It is-what do you say?-a paradox that the more we can focus our thoughts on the well-being of others, the happier we become. The first one to benefit is oneself....
Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I d...
Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to yan...
Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He ma...
I cannot come with you, my prince," he said with great tenderness, as he kneeled over the sleeping Neriah and placed the chain around his neck. "But perhaps, when you sleep, you will dream of me." He touched his hand to Neriah's forehead and whispere...
Forbid statements like “will God ever meet me?”, “am I worthy of his blessings?”, “I am not sure God will bless me”, “what shows that I am blessed?”. These statements clearly tell that you are not aware of who you are in the first pla...
The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
Out of this city marched armies that seemed to be great, and afterwards were when glory had magnified them. As the years went by, an occasional soldier returned, and with a foreign trace to his speech, told tales of what had happened to him in places...
A work of art doesn’t need to provide complete answers in order to succeed. It needs only to excite us into asking questions and give us a place to think about them while we become involved in other people’s lives.
Literature, I have always thought, is in most places and companies a singularly dull and uninteresting thing to talk about, but one may, as a rule, hate literary conversation, and yet at the right moment, with all its powers of feeling, the mind in s...
Saturday, September 17, 2005: Today in New Orleans, a traffic light worked. Someone watered flowers. And anyone with the means to get online could have heard Dr. Joy’s voice wafting in the dry wind, a sound of grace, comfort and familiarity here in...
For myself I couldn't care less, but I have a lover. Not a partner, Susannah, or a friend or a significant euphemism, but the love of my life. And he believes. And I've watched him tie himself in knots, as he struggles to find a place for himself in ...
When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know ...
If I had a hand for a penis, would a hand job be appropriate in place of a handshake at business meetings?
To abandon all is to take our hearts, place them before the One who created them, and dare to believe He can live life powerfully through our surrendered lives.
We may speak about a place where there are no tears, no death, no fear, no night; but those are just the benefits of heaven. The beauty of heaven is seeing God.
