God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.

The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message for my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.

Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.

Love is free; it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.

I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place … It is certainly part of my life of prayer.

Take more time, cover less ground.