Good men are a bit like border collies: we're happiest when we're useful. That's why the life of a good man involves constant striving for direction and meaning.
People look at a chair and say, “It’s just a chair,” but I like to think it’s more than a chair. I like to seek deeper meaning in things, even inanimate things. I know this makes me sound like a complete nutcase, but (a) I swear I’m not, an...
money appears to motivate only our interest in ourselves, making us selfish and self-centered...Money makes people feel self-sufficient, which also means they don't need or care about others; it's each man for himself
So I'd been captured? So I was starving? Did that mean I had to shrivel up and die? I could still slither. I could still hiss. Nothing had been stolen from me except my freedom. What I needed was a new plan.
Oh, and one thing. Please, please don’t depend on me too much. I mean that. I’m not going to be of much help. If your plots come to a head—if things go wrong at the last moment and you’re in danger or distress—don’t think of me. I will fa...
Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new ...
Do you think things always have an explanation? "Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the e...
Being sick is itself a kind of ressentiment. — Against this the invalid has only one great means of cure — I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without rebellion with which a Russian soldier for whom the campaign has become too much at last ...
Have you ever been in love? It's a question you're asked a lot as a kid from your friends, adults, anyone. They're curious. How do you know you're in love? Do we even really know what love means? It's just a word to define a feeling.
Are you by any chance acquainted with the words 'steel toe'? Or do the words 'permanent dent' mean anything to you?" My locker door is not intimidated. "My grandfather was a vault at Fort Knox, and if you try to dent me with a kick you will only tear...
My spiritual life is... sometimes I have access to it and sometimes I don't. When I do have access to it, it's usually a sense of my understanding what the best course of action or the best thing for me to do. By best, I mean when I have a real sense...
I think with comedy I get very sort of critical of myself and try and do the best I can and it doesn't come as second nature. I work at those kinds of films. It doesn't mean I can't do them - I've done two now, and I have a great time doing them, but...
To have faith doesn't mean you get any less frustrated when you don't do your best, but you know that it's not life and death. Take what you're given, and when you continue to work hard, you will see results. That will give you the confidence you nee...
For many, the search for Jesus is initiated from experiencing an event in life so powerful, it awakens the dragons of faith; from pain so deep, it calls on the hidden fears of the soul in an effort to survive. For others it means a serious personal l...
Tacos will grow on Christmas trees before I learn to carry a tune. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. In karaoke, talent means nada; enthusiasm is everything. What I lack in talent, I make up for in passion. Hence my karaoke problem.
Most people put off my mother's erratic behavior to the fact that she was a writer, as if that just explained everything. To me that was just an excuse. I mean, brain surgeons can be crazy too, but no one says that's all right. Fortunately for my mot...
Intuition means exactly what it sounds like, in-tuition! An inner tutor or teaching and learning mechanism that takes us forward daily. It is a resource that, where recognized, has infinite potential.
I won't stay in with married men any more said the wise girl they're too agreeable, it's a little too much like curling up with the good book. You mean a good book Oh, dear, did I say the good book sighed the witch.
God simply told us to think of Jesus as Immanuel, which means 'God with us.' How amazing that one of the main ways God wants us to think about the person of Jesus is as 'a sharing, an embrace of life by Life, a total identification of God with the ob...
Instead of practicing philoxenos, which means loving the stranger, we find many times that the church is xenophobic. We forget that Jesus, whom we claim to follow, was the ultimate lover of otherness in people. Even differences in religion didn't fre...
As she continues to answer questions about her employment, all these words mean little more to her now than I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY, I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY. She attempts the posture of a politician's wife, shoulders held back, dignif...
