Lisa Samson

“Now I find that what life was making of me, what God was making of me, was not an arrow to trace a path through the sky, but the hub of a wheel. I am the intersection, I am the connection between them all, and the purpose I've been given isn't mine alone. It's for all of us to share. What I needed wasn't something I could take. What I needed was something I could give.”

“God wasn't giving me a megaphone. He was telling me to shut up. To be still and know.”

“From two niches (to use Barber's word), North and South, we've splintered into hundreds of thousands, a nation of tribes connected not by kinship or even creed. We're merely tethered together by the Internet, by our brand loyalties and shared consumer obsessions.”

“The point is, the way to speak to the universal is through the particular. The broad message might appear to speak to everyone, but really it speaks to no one deeply. When you focus on the particular, even though it seems counterintuitive, by communicating just one thing to just one person, you say everything to everyone.”

“You should never use propaganda to teach kids the truth.”

“Confession: I don't want everybody to be beautiful, not in that unlined, creaseless, symmetrical way. Android beauty, like it comes out of a test tube. Beauty without blemish or mark. Not only do I not identify with such people, I don't believe in them either. I don't even find them attractive. This is what makes watching television so hard: they don't cast actors anymore, only models. When they make a movie of my life, they'd better cast a character actor in the lead. Don't try to tell me I'm not a character.”

“There's enough ugliness in the world without having to feel guilty about the beauty.”

“I've never heard anyone come back from downtown Baltimore waxing poetic about the authenticity of poverty.”

“If I was an eccentric old spinster in a Merchant Ivory movie, I'd want to share my lovely cottage with Holly and that's the truth. I'd do the cooking and leave the decorating to her, and we'd be inseparable.”

“I guess this thing we call faith is a climb. I always wanted to think of it as a big slide straight into the arms of God who waits at the bottom to catch us. But instead, He's a God who's on top of things - & like any mountain you climb, the closer we get to Him, the steeper the terrain.”

“Great Drew, you're sitting here about to beg Daisy's forgiveness & you wont even give your own father the time of day. Mother Teresa once said, "You only love Christ as much as the person you love the least." Sometimes I can't stand that woman.”

“I realize we can destroy ourselves in ways so deep we'll never return to the place we were before we started the destruction" - Valentine”

“Gus, its never too late for redemption. The scars never run too deep, so deep that God is not there.""I should know this. I minister to scarred people everyday. It just feels impossible when the scars are your own, or are those of the person you wronged so fully""It feels different when its you""Why is it the good you do seems like a drop in the bucket but the evil spreads for miles & miles”

“Movie Jesus is a whole lot different from Bible Jesus”

“Jesus, do you always show up like this, at the craziest of times and in the oddest of places? I sure hope so.”

“There's enough grief in this world without always getting into whose fault it is.”

“Fact: I don't know of a single girl who doesn't wish the show-it-all boxer-shorts phenomenon would go away as well. Guys, we just don't want to see your underwear. Truthfully, we believe that there is a direct correlation between how much underwear you show and how much you've got upstairs, if you know what I mean.”

“I just don't see the point of not eating cheese. I mean, if God didn't want us to eat cheese, would he have let man invent it?”

“Life took you right to the edge of where you wanted to go, then turned left.”

“I've met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I've met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I'd rather sit in the home of the atter with and errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I'd been before I got there. ”

“Although I doubt He [Jesus] said "believeth" as He was Jewish and not a fancy-pants English fellow.”

“My breath caught in wonder and surprise and I remembered that during the darkest of hours, God is. ”