“And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.”

“But it’s atheists who say that the world wasn’t made by anyone, and you say you’re not an atheist . . ."I’m not because I can’t bring myself to believe that all these things we see around us—the way trees and fruits grow, and the solar system, and our brains—came about by chance. They’re too well made. And therefore there must have been a creating mind. God.”

“Then why do you want to know?""Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.”

“I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.”

“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

“Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!”