“It is my conviction that when events are forgotten, buried in the cellar of the page, they are no longer even history.”

“In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted BACKDROP for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the ADVENTURE itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”

“And long after the history of all the big things that make the front pages are forgotten, what God has done through you and a few people will be history.”

“It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.”

“Some things are better left buried and forgotten.”

“Perhaps [the critics are right and] the drama is played out now and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world’s history those words might have been said with complete conviction, and that was on the eve of the Resurrection.”