A life lived in chaos is an impossibility.

I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I respond to death's inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.

In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.' I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.

Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that's how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again.