“A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.”

“Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.”

“Your inability to see yourself clearly is what's keeping you alive.”

“We could cope—the world could cope—with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples' minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God's new creation right in the middle of the old one.”

“Rock bottom is an inability to cope with the commonplace that is so extreme it makes even the grandest and loveliest things unbearable...Rock bottom is everything out of focus. It's a failure of vision, a failure to see the world as it is, to see the good in what it is, and only to wonder why the hell things look the way they do and not some other way.”

“One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action.”