You never came out the way you came in.

Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.

God doesn't want your careful virtue, He wants your reckless generosity.

The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult.

Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue.

We are supposed to be on the side of goodness in the sense that we need it, not that we are it.

I can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence.

What follows is more about books than it is about me, but nonetheless it is my inward autobiography, for the words we take into ourselves help to shape us.

When I'm tired and therefore indecisive, it can take half an hour to choose the book I am going to have with me while I brush my teeth.

Self-awareness is not the same thing as self-approval, any more than imagination is the same thing as day-dreaming.

[from a reader] I hope she learns to look for the joy in life instead of picking out negatives - it will change her life for the better.

When a loving, meaningful experience is our goal, we must trust an energy that is congruent with that goal as our guide along the way. Bottom line, trust love over fear if love is what you're after.

Well, I grew up as a democrat.

We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we do it.

We need to make sure we have the best people we can in our operations, and that is a constant challenge. There is always room to improve.

It's easy to say, 'I love you,' to someone, but it's more meaningful to thank someone for loving you.

I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: "You, Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine.

We're kept so busy focusing on things that are extremely mundane while the people that possess the real power are deciding what our reality's going to be.

Now, I don't make decisions as fast as I used to.

In politics, as in fishing, you don't have to be a genius. You just have to be smarter than the fish.