A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter's garret in Paris or the poet's pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will proudce a very small body of work. To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth.

To be born is to start the journey towards death.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.

As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

To be a witness means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.