Fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.

Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs and every song recalls a thousand sorrows and so they are infinite in number and all the same.

I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.

We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.

Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.

Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.

God isn't trying to make our lives easier; He wants to make them more meaningful.

It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and text of my mind.

The more humble, needy, and subdued you are before Allah, the closer you will be to Him.

If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.

We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.

Not gifted with genius but honestly holding his experiences deep in his heart, he kept his simplicity and humanity.

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

I'm a happy-go-lucky character. I'm not that miserable. But I can never let anyone into my world.

Infantile people complain and say that God is cruel or that there is no God. Mature people, however, know that there is wisdom and sometimes an eternal kindness in God's refusals.

To fuel my body, I am relentless about never eating anything that isn't of this Earth.