William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.

The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic.

The end is nothing; the road is all.

Setting ... is accident. Either a building is part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger.

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.

One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.