Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here's the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person - and he would not need it.

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.

All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.

You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.