The answer must be, I think, that the beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]

If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No", said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why, " asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?

I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267).

I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.

If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs, " then clearly I had better be scrying the signs.

I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

Innocence is a better world.

When we lose our innocence - when we start feeling the weight of the atmosphere and learn that there's death in the pot - we take leave of our sense.

For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

On the other hand, when you do something for someone else, there's often a greater, deeper satisfaction.

What sets lion chasers apart isn’t the outcome. It’s the courage to chase God-sized dreams.

We find heroes, not on battlefields, but in hospitals that tend the injured. Sometimes I think it’s easier to fight than it is to heal.

Something has to happen that you can't coach.

When you don't respond to bad behavior, you get more of it.

The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of objective rationality.

Spirituality, a defended person has no room for love or compassion-he is too busy defending himself.