I suppose I do believe that the greatest art consoles a wound that it creates, that art can give you the capacity to endure and respond to the pain it forces you to feel. Psychological pain, I mean.

Art is so often better at theology than theology is.

Nature poets can't walk across the backyard without tripping over an epiphany.

Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.

To be truly alive is to feel one's ultimate existence within one's daily existence.

Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us.

We should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations.

I don't think that someone who does not speak the original language can ever expect to produce a real translation.

I honestly don’t know whether I am describing something essential about the way we know God or merely my own weakness of mind.

I find myself continually falling back into wounds, wishes, terrors I thought I had risen beyond.

I'm drawn to this range, that's for sure, but I suppose the thing that most appeals to me about Mandelstam is the sense you get from every poem that everything - the poet's very soul - is at stake.

Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.

So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.

Elegance and kindness is an elegant and kind reply to the rudeness of this world!

The world may take your reputation from you but it cannot take your character.

I couldn't be a director because I couldn't put up with the actors. I don't have the patience. Why, I'd probably kill the actors. Not to mention some of the beautiful actresses.

What God has asked you to do is not just difficult, it is impossible. He is well able!

A woman's desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions.

People so seldom say I love you And then it's either too late or love goes. So when I tell you I love you, It doesn't mean I know you'll never go, Only that I wish you didn't have to.

Nobody is ever impoverished through the giving of charity.

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent.