All things from the north are devilish.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

If we all gave all our goods to the poor, the church would fall apart. If we all hated our father and mother, as Jesus told us to, there'd be an end of the church's emphasis on the family as being the one important thing holding the whole society together. There are all sorts of ways in which the church's teachings contradict directly what Jesus says in the Gospel.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.