“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.”

“Why God should want and need us is a mystery. But it is true: otherwise he would not have created us and life would ultimately have no meaning for us. It is good to remember that in God the is a constancy, a consistency of attitude which never changes, irrespective of what we are or how we act: he never changes in is wanting us or needing us.”

“Julian had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”

“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”

“Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

“if you'd like it put more simply---Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”