49 quotes
American writer (1918–2007)
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
"A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming."
on Identity
"Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving."
on Creativity
"A book, too, can be a star 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly."
on Writing
"There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation."
on Faith
"I am slowly coming to understand with all my heart as well as my head that love is not a feeling. It is a person."
on Love
"Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys."
"We all tend to make zealous judgement, and thereby close ourselves off from revelation."
on Critical Thinking
"But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential."
on Philosophy
"When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening."
on Mindfulness
"Your intuition and your intellect should be working together… making love. That’s how it works best."
"The author & the reader "know" each other: they meet on the bridge of words"
"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
"A book comes and says, 'Write me."
"Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are."
on Relationships
"Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories."
"In reading we must become creators."
"What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be."
on Art
"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."
"Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious."
"She knew that the freedom was in herself, just as the prison had been."
on Freedom