We don't consider the roles that we're taking in making the world the way it is.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

Understanding is a creative act in a dimension we do not see.

I have an active imagination.

Its either Christ or the other god.

I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

Ah, I don't do interviews, really.

Man with his burning soul Has but an hour of breath To build a ship of Truth In which his soul may sail- Sail on the sea of death. For death takes toll Of beauty, courage, youth, Of all but Truth.

Worship is not about personality, temperament, personal limitations, church background, or comfort. It is about God.

An audience can be like a pack of wolves.

I believe that you understand a church only when you kneel in it.