Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of.

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.

I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being

Some of the madmen are really fun to be with. I soon learnt to relate to them. I soon became one of them. I ended up the maddest of the mad. There is no madder than myself! Please believe it.

Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away.

They were using the dolls to project their dreams of their own futures as adult women.

Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

If God didn't want man to hunt, He wouldn't have given us plaid shirts.

The first prerequisite of an advanced being is a sense of humor.

It's important to wake up everyday and remind yourself what you're working towards. You create your own life, it's not set out there for you.

It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's American editors.