The proper biblical understanding of sin is much more radical and far-reaching. It can never be used as a weapon, because it will recoil on anyone who tries to deploy it that way.
When we make the unfamiliar familiar,make the unknown known,make the uncomfortable comfortable,and believe the unbelievable, we can then expect the unexpected.
One fall day in Boston, a tall mechanical engineering student named Joe entered the student union at Harvard University. He was all ambition and acne
It was the summer just before we both turned twenty. Before life began to chip away at us like a sculptor into marble, reducing us from endless unformed possibility into the women we would ultimately become.
But replacing hunger for divine connection with Double Stuf Oreos is like giving a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic.
Old Bilbo: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole full of worms and oozy smells. This was a hobbit-hole and that means good food, a warm hearth, and all the comforts of home.
Bilbo Baggins: [to the trolls, about cooking the dwarves] Well, I mean, have you smelled them? You're going to need something a lot stronger than sage before you can plate this lot up!
Great Goblin: [singing] Bones will be shattered, necks will be wrung! You'll be beaten and battered, from racks you'll be hung! You will die down here and never be found, down in the deep of Goblin Town!
Dwalin: I thought we had lost our burglar. Thorin Oakenshield: He's been lost ever since he left his home. He should not have come, he has no place among us.
Thorin Oakenshield: Rumors have begun to spread, The dragon Smaug has not been seen in many years... Perhaps the vast wealth of our people lies unprotected... perhaps it is time to take back Erebor!
Bilbo Baggins: [griping about the dwarves] They pillaged the pantry. I'm not even going to tell you what they've done to the bathroom, they all but destroyed the plumbing. I don't understand; what are they doing in my house?
Dori: Excuse me, Mr. Gandalf? Gandalf: Yes? Dori: May I tempt you with a cup of chamomile? Gandalf: Oh, no, thank you, Dori. A little red wine for me, I think.
Voice from the street: [Sam is sitting on the parapet of the theatre roof. Someone shouts from below] JUUUMP! Sam: EAT ME! Voice from the street: OKAY. JUMP ON MY FACE! Sam: I love this city.
Riggan: That's you Mike. You're Mr. Natural. Mr. "F - k the scene, just stare at my massive hard-on," right? That's the truth of the moment. Mike Shiner: Do you think it was massive?
Riggan: Why did we break up? Sylvia: Because you threw a kitchen knife at me. And an hour later you were telling me how much you loved me.
Young Birdman: You could jump right back into that suit if you wanted to. We're not dead. Riggan: Look at me. Look at this. Look, look, look! I look like a turkey with leukemia!
You can't foster a relationship with someone who is always checking your performance to make sure it's adequate enough to merit his friendship.
Paradox is beloved of novelists. The despised savior, the humane whore, the selfish man suddenly munificent, the wise fool, and the cowardly hero. Most writers spend their lives writing about unexpected malice in the supposedly virtuous, and unexpect...
Quote from “Unexpected Tales from the Ends of the Earth”: “The only one everlasting love is the unrealized one. The love to this thing that you’d never had. Behind it is hidden the love to your own ego and feelings".
You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself. (p. 84)
Bilbo Baggins: I have... I have never used a sword in my life. Gandalf: And I hope you never have to. But if you do, remember this: true courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.
