Quotes

[on the DACA people] They have been roasting over a slow fire for months, for no reason. Deadlines changing, threats floating, all this sort of thing. If there's one thing the Bible insists on, it is that you are kind to strangers, that you are generous to strangers. They're not even strangers - they're us, with a little technical difficulty. How anyone who claims to know anything about the Bible could endure this spectacle, I cannot begin to imagine.

[observation, 2018] It is shocking how defenseless the protections of the environment, of the poor and even of the rights of voters have been shown to be in recent years. No one defends these things as America, because the Left no more than the right thinks of them as core values.

Truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness.

The Sabbath is faithful. In a week she'll be here again.

Meaninglessness would come as a terrible blow to most people. It would be full of significance for them. So it wouldn't be meaningless.

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.

Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can't get away from it.

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it.

It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men. So they get themselves drawn into situations that are harmful to them. I have seen this happen many, many times. I have always had trouble finding a way to caution against it. Since it is, in a word, Christlike.

I was trying to remember what birds did before there were telephone wires. It would have been much harder for them to roost in the sunlight, which is a thing they clearly enjoy doing.

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.

I love loneliness. I consider my history with loneliness to be among my great blessings...I hasten to add that it is definitely not for everyone. It should be approached with caution.

To wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.

People are complex - that's the whole center of interest. I don't make my characters complex. I have a feeling that I know a character, and one of the aspects of that is knowing that they are complex. I never have the feeling of putting a character together from a selection of qualities.

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it?