“People need something to worship, lad. They need a belief in something beyond this world. Look at it now. This world is in chaos. People are killing each other for conquest, stealing, bringing each other down whenever they get the chance. Believe it or not, most people know this in one way or another. Perhaps they don’t understand the magnitude, but they see that this world is anything but perfect. They need something that makes their comings and goings here worthwhile.”

“It is not the truth that people cannot handle. It is the consequences that stem from that truth.”

“There are many people who are frightened of something or other, Mma," she said. "Even here in Botswana there are people who are frightened."They had looked at each other without saying anything. Each knew what the other meant; each knew that there were things that people preferred not to acknowledge not to admit, lest the admission encourage that which needed no encouragement.”

“I know our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.”

“Considering what Adam went through to appreciate Eve to the utmost, I wondered how beautiful it is that you and I were created to need each other. The romantic need is just the beginning, because we need our families and we need our friends. In this way, we are made in God’s image. Certainly God does not need people in the way you and I do, but He feels a joy at being loved, and He feels a joy at delivering love. It is a stinking thought to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without a host of other people. We are relational indeed. And the Bible, with all its understanding of the relational needs of humans, was becoming more meaningful to me as I turned the pages. God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community.”

“The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems.”

“I believe in work. If somebody doesn't create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they're treading water -- that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn't mean anything at all in this world. And that's a despairing and destructive feeling. It'll kill you.”