But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.

An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.

Everybody takes what they life from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don't suit them.

I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion, I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.