What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church.

Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.