Neil Abramson

“God lives in the peaks and valleys, the jarring transitions, not in the mundane, the safe, the smooth, or the repetitive. But that means there must be at least a certain amount of dissonance. Without dissonance, there is no need of belief, and without belief there surely is no God.”

“I've seen too much sacrifice to believe that God is behind all of it, and I've seen sacrifice that has no indicia of the hand of God at all. Loss is not always part of some greater plan explainable by reference to the actions of a divine being with a divine purpose.”

“I was raised to believe that God speaks in the language of sacrifice," he told me, "You are expected to sacrifice because it is the measure of the depth of your belief...”

“Actually, I liked the fact that happenstance had brought him to the right place; it was comforting to know that that life would support us if only we were listening.”

“...the shadows thrown by a single candle flame often can be more frightening that total darkness.”

“Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation.”

“Pain explains a great deal of human conduct, but the fear of pain even more.”

“Pessimism, cynicism and fear will only lead to a very small life. Don’t live small.”