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BELIEF …

“I think every word in the Bible was meant to be pushed against so that we can see how it pushes back.” – Ian Frazier

“If you could turn your heart into a cow stall, Christ would be born again on earth.” – Angelius Silesius

“God is a writer and we are both the heroes and the readers.” – Isaac B. Singer

“The wind of God is always blowing, but you must hoist your sail.” – Fenelon 

“Every religion which does not affirm that God is hidden, is not true.” – Pascal

“When a person becomes religious, does that person’s spirit leave the body? Or finally enter it?” – Robert Bly

“This world, and life itself, is nothing but an amazing receptacle for spirit. It is not a receptacle for money; nor are our bodies, nor our minds.” – Rick Bass

“The spiritual story is the one in which the soul, finally aware of its existence, must bushwack its way to its true home against perilous odds.” – Patricia Hampl

“God dazzles us by an excess of truth. Music carries us to God in default of truth.” – Aquinas

“My definition of sin is that which hurts people, despoils, demeans, destroys God’s image and likeness in human beings and in the rest of the created order. Anything that spoils that is sin.”  – William Frey

“Modern people are drawn to faith while practicing doubt, as our ancestors confessed their doubts while practicing their faith.” – Adam Gopnik

“The balance favors epiphany.” – Teju Cole

POLITICS …

“It took me a while to learn that what’s important in journalism is not how close you are to power but how close you are to reality.” – Bill Moyers

“How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.” – Karl Kraus

“We live in a utopia: it just isn’t ours” – China Miéville

“The great French thinker and activist Simone Weil had a prescription that she wrote down in her journal in 1933: ‘Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.’ A few days later, she added, ‘Refuse to be an accomplice. Don’t lie – don’t keep your eyes shut.'” – Masha Gessen

“If I am not who you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.” – James Baldwin

“The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.” – Marshall McLuhan

“The person who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.” – Henry Miller

“To be afraid is to think of yourself continually, to be unable to imagine an objective course of events.” – E.M. Cioran

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” – G.K. Chesterton

WRITING …

“Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.” – Martin Amis

“Aim high, and tell the truth.” – V.S. Naipaul

“Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.” – Zadie Smith

“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” – Elmore Leonard

“I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.” – Wislawa Szymborska

“When you write about hurt, you are no longer a victim or an enemy but a writer. Metabolize injury into art.” – Julia Cameron

“The energy of the creative impulse comes from love and all its manifestations – admiration, compassion, respect, gratitude, praise, tenderness, adoration, enthusiasm. Critics obstruct, impose rules, frighten, ridicule.” – Brenda Leland

“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. And there are trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.” – Jean Rhys

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.” – William Stafford

“You write from what you know, but you write into what you don’t know.” – Grace Paley

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser

“Drawing on my command of the English language, I said nothing.” – Robert Benchley