“Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.”

“I was captivated by the thought: what if persecution is the normal, expected situation for a believer? And what if persecution is, in fact, soil in which faith can grow?”

“What grows [from] the dark soil of disappointment?”

“A tree grows into the air because it grows out of the air. The bulk of the tree is not made from the soil beneath- indeed, the soil is in large part made by the tree. Both soil and tree are made from the sun and wind and rain. The land is just a place to stand.”

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”

“Conversion requires an alteration of the will, and an alteration which, in the last resort, does not occur without the intervention of the supernatural.”