“Wright's point was that the God of the Israelites is not the God who speaks, if speaking is a means of conveying a word that can be dissociated from acts, and thereby "dissociated from history and dealt with as an abstraction" for theological contemplation.”

“First, any term applied to God is only ana analogy; when this is forgotten, any God-defining term is sacrilegious.”

“Whether it is Paul defending Judaism, Augustine pursing philosophical learnedness, Luther attempting complete ritual self-abasement, each finally realized he had given himself to secular forms of self-salvation and to a world filled with human achievement but empty of God.”

“Sometimes, life seems to have a higher meaning. Events unfold in uncanny sequences. Long-forgotten acquaintances turn up with news that changes lives. A stranger appears and speaks a few words of wisdom, solving a previously insoluble problem, or something in a recent dream transpires in reality. Suddenly the existence of God seems confirmed.”

“All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.”

“From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.”

“If he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences.”