When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew, Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend. When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

People are more than just the way they look.

prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous.

We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.

To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in the extraordinary drama written by somebody else.

Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.