A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.

Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.

Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.

...is this not in fact the purpose of young Americans going abroad? To make them think of things they never thought of?

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.

In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other.

Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person.

Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.

You have no idea, right now, what some young person in your church will mean for the cause of Christ. Lean in, encourage, mentor, think big.

That's what metal means to me, feeling that feeling when you hear something that totally turns you on.

When it comes to knowing what to say, to charm, I always had it.

To be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what you are, for what you will become

I am really pleased to hear each of my songs described as a total surprise. This is what I want!

Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.

Around in silent grandeur stood The stately children of the wood; Maple and elm and towering pine Mantled in folds of dark woodbine.

The cottage industry of India had to perish in order that Lancashire might flourish.