“The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.”

“God sent the Egyptians ten plagues that became increasingly harder, one after the other, starting with blood, and ending with the death of the first born. Similarly, debt sometimes starts with charging just a couple of extra dollars to our credit cards when we want something we can’t afford to pay cash for. Before long, it might turn into a second mortgage on our house. Debt can kill our future and take our house with it.”

“The psyche will do anything to avoid pain, and when faced with something traumatic, like having to pay, its instinct is to put it off - what Freud called 'Nachträglichkeit' or delayed effect. Credit card and psyche conspire to soften the blow of paying by staggering it over time.”

“Average household credit card debt topped the landmark of $10,000 in 2006, a hundredfold increase over the average consumer debt in the 1960s. One consequence: Much of the material buried in landfills in recent years was bought with those same credit cards, leading to the quintessentially American practice of consumers continuing to pay, sometimes for years, for purchases after they become trash.”

“You think you're paying your dollar for a chance at the $6.2 million jackpot on Saturday, but really you're paying for the pleasure of the car ride home, deciding which credit card to pay off first and where your kid will suddenly be able to go to college.”

“In Heaven, there are no debts - all have been paid, one way or another - but in Hell there's nothing but debts, and a great deal of payment is exacted, though you can't ever get all paid up. You have to pay, and pay, and keep on paying. So Hell is like an infernal maxed-out credit card that multiplies the charges endlessly.”