We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

Art is communication.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.

Aeschylus writes, "In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grade of God.

Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.

Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.

Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that "the people" do no want freedom.

To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

we are waiting and waiting and doing nothing, until it is too late, and they commit crimes so serious that all society wants to do is punish instead of rehabilitate.

The density of meaning is external and context dependent.

I just want to be in a winning situation. That's the whole thing. It's nothing financial.

I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely and who rely on you in return.

Yeah, acting is very difficult. As much as I love it, and the challenge of it, I'm so often just terrified by it.

The people I respect all died broke and despairing. They didn't leave a lot of hammered iron behind them like Donald Trump has done.

When people are very original, sometimes they are original as a way to resist the mainstream.

I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies.

Those who are opposed to armed uprising ... must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards.