“The ability to find solutions to life's challenges is what makes us grow as a person.”

“One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.”

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER OF THE AUTHORperG.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE”

“Over the years I've found it much more helpful to follow the advice of Sister Liebert and seek to treat each young person as a teacher from God, someone God has placed in my life in order to help me grow in faith. When I encounter a young person, I find it much more helpful to think that she (or he) may be the only Jesus I'll ever know. Perhaps by seeking to encounter the presence of Christ in young people, we'll find ourselves better able to see them, hear them, feel compassion for them, and respond in kindness.”

“The ability to arrive uninvited in an alien land and convince one’s hosts that almost everything they believe is wrong requires a rather forceful personality.”

“But, Catherine, everything's that true despite us - the things they're talking about, natural laws - will always remain true despite us. What matters is what's true because of us. That's what's up for grabs. That's where the battle is. One remembers and values one's life not for its objective truths, but for the emotional truths...The only thing that's really true, that lasts, and makes life worthwhile is the truth that's fixed in the heart. That's what we live and die for. It comes in epiphanies, and it comes in love, and don't ever let frightened people turn you away from it.”

“I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.”