“All of cleanliness is neither embraced nor denied by the taking of cold baths.”

“I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.”

“For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before. ”

“It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?”

“Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things.”

“None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.”

“One of the advantages of laws is that you can follow them blind, when you have lost all your moorings. You can't follow your instincts, but you can remember your rule.”