“If good stuff happened to us until we died it wouldn't be called Life. It would be called Great.”

“But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.”

“Certain parts of your life, Dan, are directed by an almost desperate passion. Playwrights call it ends-of-the-earth type stuff. And it's good stuff.”

“The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir'. It just happens.”

“you wouldn't happen to have a pipe and a bit of tobacco about, would-i heard that!gandalf enjoyed a good pipe!why do you think he's called gandalf the gray? it wasn't for the color of his robes”

“The call of God is a call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers, and is not of any moment. The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, “God called me there.” If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us.”