“Count calories if you like, but go ahead and gorge yourself on books. What have you got to lose but a small mind?”

“No matter what our age, we ought to never stop eating books, for books are the feast of the imagination.”

“Books -- they come home hot in your hands and then by increments they warm your life, like heated bricks in a New England bed.”

“Conversation is how values get ordered, how passion is made contagious. If a parent talks about it, it's important. If a child is allowed to join the conversation, then that child becomes more than a table decoration, he has a part to play in the drama that is growing up. If his ideas count, then he counts. Children gain essential access to adulthood by being given a safe place to speak, and by rehearsing their thoughts out loud before the most patient and supportive audience they will ever know.”

“It is easier and much more satisfying to rail against the Right than to suggest that we go back to Genesis 1 and study together. Liberals can be just as intolerant as fundamentalists, and we have arrived at a moment in human history when intolerance and hope are mutually exclusive. (p. 6)”

“Let your children see you kiss. Let them see you embrace. Let them overhear your teasing, your gentle rebukes, even your well-intentioned jealousy. Domestic courtship reinforces the notion that people are together because they want to be together, not because it is the decent, practical thing to do.”

“Contemporary Christians have declared war on individual immorality but seem remarkably silent about the evil of systems, especially corporate greed and malfeasance. (p. 176)”