To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.

The preaching is part of the reason I don't go to church. Plus, I don't know, it was never part of my tradition.

All 'isms' run out in the end, and good riddance to most of them. Patriotism for example. [...] If in the interest of making sure we don't blow ourselves off the map once and for all, we end up relinquishing a measure of national sovereignty to some international body, so much the worse for national sovereignty. There is only one Sovereignty that matters ultimately, and it is of another sort altogether.

Despair has been called the unforgivable sin-not presumably because God refuses to forgive it, but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven.

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.

To believe is not intellectual assent: "Yes, I believe in Jesus. I will sign my name to the Nicene Creed. I believe it all" - which you could do, [but] it would have no effect on who you were or what you did. It is, rather, to give your heart.

You hear as many things as you would imagine. I hear voices of people I loved once. I hear moments that took place. I hear silences.