And if there is no god?You act as if there is, and it's the same thing.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.

People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.

Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.

Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

Death is the perfect knowing.

Best way to find the weakness of the enemy is to understand their ways.

I will take all the steps necessary to give the NHS at least another £100million per week by 2020.

Decisions made quickly were almost always regretted quickly.

The abuse of faith has to be resisted precisely.

If someone like you showed up to abduct me, I'd let you.