Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once.

The first spiritual quality we need to have is not faith; it is courage.

If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.

He seemed to be talking about my fears, my insecurity, and my unwillingness to see what was wonderful because tomorrow it might disappear and I might suffer. The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not.

I have spent every New Year's Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It's a place with meaning for me.

Surrendering completely to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything, including our own well-being or our ability to make decisions. It means loving in the deepest sense of the word. The truth is that we don't want to be saved in the way God has chosen; we want to keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious of our decisions, to be capable of choosing the object of our devotion.

In our obsessive wish to arrive, we often forget the most important thing, which is the journey.