To refuse to respond is in itself a response.
When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.
The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.
A mystic is a person who sees the facts as inadequate.
One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking.
I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy.
Be aware that rigidity imprisons.
If our language is watered down, then mankind becomes less human, and less free...
As far as I’m concerned, there is only one absolute: God is love.
Refusing to accept God’s love because we’re unworthy – of course we’re unworthy! – is another golden calf.
Deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence.
I have a point of view. You have a point of view. God has view.
What can we give a child when there is nothing left?
The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith.
I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about.
To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.
There’s nothing more physically exhausting than a sense of failure.
Anything that’s natural can’t be sinful-it may be inconvenient, but it’s not sinful.
Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think.
Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others.