“The soul hardly ever realizes it, but whether he is a believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God.”

“What the soul hardly realizes is that, unbeliever or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God.”

“The first night in a new place usually gives me a tinny, homesick feeling that makes it hard to sleep. Not homesick for anywhere in particular. Just a general feeling of uprootedness. Loneliness. Even if people I love are sleeping nearby.”

“Hell is only loneliness, a place without play for the soul, a place without God. How could there be God in loneliness when God is presence?”

“The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now.”

“Half asleep, he wondered whether that might not have been his happiest day ever, the last, perfect day swelling with the immensity of his secret intent, secret creation—the day before everything changed—the day before he realized, for the first time, yet with absolute finality, just how small his private immensity really was when measured against that other vast, dark, impersonal immensity, call it God, or history, or simply life.”