“Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.”

“Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.”

“time having transformed his own body into a storehouse for man-made contraptions designed to fend off collapse... there was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us.”

“But to wish oneself into another's glory, as boy or as man, is an impossibility, untenable on psychological grounds if you are not a writer, and on aesthetic grounds if you are.”

“Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup.”

“Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.”

“As far as I can see there is no conquering or exorcising the past with words - words born either of imagination or forthrightness.”