Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it.

You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

Jesus said his disciples would be known for their love, not for their placards of protest and angry letters to the editor.

These precious illusions in my head did not let me down when I was defenseless, and parting with them is like parting with invisible best friends.

God made thee good as thou art beautiful.

It scares the living crap out of me how good wine is at ten dollars.

What happened yesterday is over. What happens today is up to you.

I would certainly never want to inflict anything on the world exactly as [Buckminster Fuller] envisioned it because there is a technocratic worldview that I find horrific.

If you banish fear, nothing terribly bad can happen to you.

Maybe it's a little depressing to think that my vision of a perfect world is actually so messed up, but I think it means that I don't really understand what 'perfect' is.

Not being untutored in suffering, I learn to pity those in affliction

At the time the Sendmail program had a very poor reputation with respect to security, with four root vulnerabilities per year for two successive years.