You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.

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.

If preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for.

Preaching and writing - it's the same. Whether I'm writing to speak or writing to be read in a book, it's the same thing.

Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.

One life on this earth is all that we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.

Gail Godwin has written a book about the heaviest matters of loss, grief, and loneliness with a touch so light that I was as often deeply amused by it as I was deeply moved.