Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists: Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate religious faith.

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

I don't give a damn what people think.

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.

Only little boys and old men sneer at love.

A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.

The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?

There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance.

Great lovers have made great sacrifices.

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

Be a sinner and sin boldly,  but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.

Poetry is the scholar's art.

Outdated ideas inevitably lead to outdated behaviors. When ignorance and hate enter the room, progress makes its exit.

Oh my God!” Sam said again, his voice shaking. I’ve given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth.

One kid's old, used-up equipment is another kid's brand-new, awesome, awesome equipment.

One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.

The imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

I don't think you can name a good picture where the production or the possible promotion isn't "cast-contingent." That means the film needs not just star power but star box office power.

American capitalism has been both overpraised and overindicted. It is neither the Plumed Knight nor the monstrous Robber Baron.

If you go through life and you don't find the beauty in an unexpected place, then you really have a sad existence.