“This does not necessarily mean that the man whose path at this moment crosses mine will be personally endowed with each and all of the marvellous qualities which we are accustomed to attribute to our representations of God, that he will be a perfect image of the divine Majesty, a striking sign of the Presence. But then, what about ourselves, as we look doubtfully at this man? Do we ourselves perfectly mirror the Lord in our bodies, our hearts and minds, our behaviour? What matters in our meeting is not the quality of the image that he and I present of God, still less any reflections upon this quality, but precisely the setting free of that image in his depths as in mine”

“The satires of Isaiah against the makers of idols of wood and gold apply just as much to the makers of conceptual idols. the simple man sculpts a bit of wood and prostrates himself: "You are my God"...The intelligent man sculpts a concept and does likewise. And he thinks he got there because he has made a god of his own size!”

“We attribute to ourselves qualities that we do not possess because if we possessed them, our lives would exactly mirror our image of ourselves. Our lies about what is really happening in our lives are what we use to "patch up" our ego with rationalizations and justifications, all of which conceal from us the fact that we cannot really do anything because we have no Being.”

“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with Him and Him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. Solitude is a place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from the victimizing compulsions of the world.”

“Behaviour is the mirror in which we can display our image.”

“There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.”

“We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.”