It is not the objective proof of God's existence that we want but the experience of God's presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.

The first ministers were the twelve disciples. There is no evidence that Jesus chose them because they are brighter or nicer than other people. Their sole qualification seems to have been their initial willingness to rise to their feet when Jesus said, "Follow me."

It's not as if I knew answers which I am going to set down in the form of a novel or a memoir or a sermon. It's, rather, I'm going to search myself for what I might have to say in this area.

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.

Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength.

I loved rain for making home seem home more deeply, and I suspect that is why, from as far back as I can remember, I also loved those books I read and the people I met in them and the worlds they opened up to me. Like a house in the rain, books were havens of permanence and protection from whatever it was that as a child I needed protection from.