Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value. The world doesn't care if I write another word, and if I am to care, I have to summon all my interior motivation and strength.

Wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom.

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

Like faith, marriage is a mystery. The person you're committed to spending your life with is known and yet unknown, at the same time remarkably intimate and necessarily other. The classic seven-year itch may not be a case of familiarity breeding ennui and contempt, but the shock of having someone you thought you knew all too well suddenly seem a stranger. When that happens, you are compelled to either recommit to the relationship or get the hell out. There are many such times in a marriage.

This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.