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.

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

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

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.

Let my toes teach the shore how to feel a tranquil lifethrough the wetness of sands Let my heart latch the doorof blackness, as all my pain now blue sky understands

Don't ever underestimate the lengths of God's future blessings for you.

I guess you could say I've been writing all my life.

Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. Watch any good musician and you'll see what I mean.

I think of how and where all the horrible people I've come across in my life ended up, and I smile.

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

Other times, you're doing some piece of work and suddenly you get feedback that tells you that you have touched something that is very alive in the cosmos.

The moon was so young, so strange, even as a young girl who is dreaming and is afraid to tell her dreams; and it was shining only for itself.

European fisheries are a disaster. The American fisheries are well-kept.

Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole. The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety.