Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.

The world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is worldly language.

The Shield was another of the Fear's names. According to Laughter, it means he shields the seed of Abraham the way a man starting a fire shields the flame. When Sarah was about to die childless, the Fear gave her a son. When Abraham was about to slaughter the son, the Fear gave him the ram. He is always shielding us like a guttering wick, Laughter said, because the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at. It is a fire in the dark that will light the whole world home.

What makes you, in the deepest sense of the word, happy? That's what you should be doing, if the other part is also met - if it is something the world needs.

One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God

A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.