No one has the right to live without being shocked.

Long before writing, people were telling each other stories and the audiobook goes all the way back to that tradition.

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway.

I'm with the Grimms on this: stories for young and old. You can't characterize them any better than that.

I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book.

Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.