“My main concern is with the world order”

“This is the world we live in,a world of safety and happiness and order, a world withoutlove.A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off theirtongues and the parents are concerned. Notheartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, asthey are when they are late to pay their taxes.”

“Participants in the kingdom of the world trust the power of the sword to control behavior; participants of the kingdom of God trust the power of self-sacrificial love to transform hearts. The kingdom of the world is concerned with preserving law and order by force; the kingdom of God is concerned with establishing the rule of God through love. The kingdom of the world is centrally concerned with what people do; the kingdom of God is centrally concerned with how people are and what they can become.The kingdom of the world is characterized by judgment; the kingdom of God is characterized by outrageous, even scandalous, grace.”

“The fact that the bodies weren’t my first concern–-pissing and bodies were, in that order—-helped too. Killers have different priorities.”

“From the outset my main concern was with the shape and the self-contained nature of discrete things, the curve of banisters on a staircase, the molding of a stone arch over a gateway, the tangled precision of the blades in a tussock of dried grass.”

“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”