We all cross a hundred peaks to get even this far. And there will be more before we each make it to whatever God has fated for us.

But war had a taming effect

What he wanted to say was that two thousand years of peace could be undone in a month of war.

An entire lifetime can change in one afternoon. The rest of the world can continue on, unaware of a quiet, solitary cataclysm occurring a few feet away.

To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again.

He believes that people have destroyed religion and religion has destroyed people. He says he believes in God, but he doesn't believe in people.

What is gone is gone and will not come back. When the earth swallows, it swallows forever and we are left to stumble along feeling the absences. These are our burdens.

Cornered mothers pray for strange things.

The elderly become invisible sooner than we would hope.

Yes, well, people are very good at destroying things, good things.

Can a mother commit a greater sin than ignoring her intuitions?

Is the church really demonstrating the new life in Christ if there is no discipline, if there is no fencing in of the Lord's table, no demand for purity of life?

Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.

Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

We have allowed the interests of capital to outweigh the interests of human beings and our Earth.

Because monks come from the midst of purity, they consider as good and pure what does not arouse desire among other people.

The one thing I always come back to as a writer, what I consider my bedrock, is a lot of charged images that appear in the text.

I can't imagine anything worse than trying to impress a girl with dinner. To be honest, I'm always impressing myself, not other people.

A man who finishes a book is always alone when he finishes it.

I've always had a sense of humour, and I still do, so I just want to go on performing as long as I can. It's as simple as that.