I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.

If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. If what you are doing is not working, do something else.

Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.

Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.

Everything is in the way the material is composed.

The Christ of Bethlehem is the Christ of Galilee, is the Christ of the Crucifixion, is the Christ of the Resurrection, is the Christ of the Eucharist

Beliefs: Those things we hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

Dublin was turning into Disneyland with super-pubs, a Purgatory open till five in the morning.

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.

Are we to have a church in which everyone's judgment is equal to everyone else's? That's not a church, it's chaos. Common sense dictates that you keep the fox out of the chicken coop.

It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.

Only love that continues to flow in the face of anger, blame, and indifference can be called love. All else is simply a transaction.

Intelligence and effort can be no compensation for ugliness.

He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.

Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light

I count him lost who is lost to shame.

He was not only, I soon discovered, a water drinker, but a strict vegetarian, to which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, volubility, and sensitiveness of mind.

...the moving spirit of militancy is deep and abiding reverence for human life.

If you serve too many masters, you'll soon suffer.

Without possessions, success, fame; who are you?

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.