“...and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence...”

“This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds. ...your spirits don't rise until you get way down. Maybe it's because this - the mud, the bottom - is where it all rises from. ...when someone enters that valley with you, that mud, it somehow saves you again.”

“What can we say beyond Wow, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can't have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath.”

“A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.”

“Our Beasts and our Thieves and our ChattelsHave weight for good or for ill;But the Poor are only His image,His presence, His word, His will; -And so Lazarus lies at our doorstepAnd Dives neglects him still.”

“Oh, God," she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck. "Nicholas…" He pushed her away from him. "I find I'm not in the mood,I'm not very good company right now. I kept away for as long as I could, but the amusements of Venice are not to my taste. I'll relieve you of my presence…" She caught his wrist, halting him. "Nicholas,I love you." "Don't," he snapped at her, but he didn't break free. "Don't you understand? Haven't I proved it, time and time again? I'm a monster, not worthy of love, not worthy of anything at all…" "I love you," she said again, catching his other hand, pulling his arms around her, pulling his tall, tension-racked body tight against hers. "I love you.”

“If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.”