If you die, I'll die.' 'But is you live, I'll live.' - Bowman and Kestrel, Firesong
William NicholsonA well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever.
William NicholsonSelf-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.
William NicholsonThere is this notion that the lives of the comfortable-off middle class don't merit being treated seriously and with compassion.
William NicholsonGod creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.
William NicholsonI pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me.
William NicholsonThe English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad.
William NicholsonI am as I am. The world is as it is. Whether I am content with that has very little to do with it.
William NicholsonToday begins my walk with you. Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. When you sleep, I will sleep. When you rise, I will rise. I will pass my days within the sound of your voice, and my nights within the reach of your hand. And none shall come between us. - Manth Vow
William NicholsonHere I am going to say something which may come as a bit of a shock. God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to be lovable. Worthy of love. Able to be loved by Him. We don't start off being all that lovable, if we're honest. What makes people hard to love? Isn't it what is commonly called selfishness? Selfish people are hard to love because so little love comes out of them.
William NicholsonMy study is a converted garage which is largely lined with bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled with manuscripts of my film scripts, plays and books.
William NicholsonMadly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form: not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.
William NicholsonWhy should I be honored? Don't I have enough attention, comfort and power already?
William NicholsonAll the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the lonliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be.
William Nicholson