In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant.

In the cycle of a great civilization, the artist begins as priest, and ends as a clown or buffoon.

In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.

I never met a rich man who was happy, but I have only very occasionally met a poor man who did not want to become a rich man.

Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.

I regard myself as a religious... the temper of my mind as religious, and because I regard the temper of my mind as religious, I am profoundly skeptical about any form of human authority, any form of human self-importance.

In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant.