Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.

I think we do need a Constitutional amendment to take the profit out of politics by imposing term limits.

Do what you can with what you have where you are.

Good luck with your asparagus.

I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf

Barack Obama is not only going to reside in Washington and be on call, essentially, with the Drive-By Media, he's setting up what essentially is going to be a shadow government.

As a citizen, you have a duty to ask what is true and what is false.

One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.

I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke.