There’s evil in the world, all right. Being aware of it makes you a realist, not a paranoid.
What does worry accomplish except to breed more worry?
While life could be evaded, death could not.
In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.
I just became fascinated with how complex and unlikely the universe is and life is and Catholicism gives me an answer to that.
Please, don’t torture me with cliches. If you’re going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors.
Atlas isn’t carrying the world on his shoulders, no giant muscular hulk with a sense of responsibility; the world is balanced on a pyramid of clowns, and they are always tooting horns and wobbling and goosing each other.
The biggest advice is being true to what you want to do. Don’t worry if other people understand it or don’t understand it. If what you’re doing has merit, it will find its way.
The world howls for social justice, but when it comes to social responsibility, you sometimes cant even hear crickets chirping.
Creating a family in this turbulent world is an act of faith, a wager that against all odds there will be a future, that love can last, that the heart can triumph against all adversities and even against the grinding wheel of time.
I’ve had good publishers and bad publishers, and you’ve got to learn when the advice is sensible and when it’s not.
Loss is the hardest thing, I said. But it’s also the teacher that’s the most difficult to ignore.
Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations.
One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.
We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.
In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths.
I am my own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my fundamental humanity.
Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.
Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am.
We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.