“Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.”

“I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.I Name you Calvin.I Name you Mr. Jenkins.I Name you Proginoskes.I fill you with Naming.Be!Be, butterfly and behemoth,be galaxy and grasshopper,star and sparrow,you matter,you are,be!Be caterpillar and comet,Be porcupine and planet,sea sand and solar system,sing with us,dance with us,rejoice with us,for the glory of creation,seagulls and seraphimangle worms and angel host,chrysanthemum and cherubim.(O cherubim.)Be!Sing for the gloryof the living and the lovingthe flaming of creationsing with usdance with usbe with us.Be!"- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door”

“We cannot always cry at the right timeand who is to say which time is right?”

“How long your closet held a whiff of you,Long after hangers hung austere and bare.I would walk in and suddenly the trueSharp sweet sweat scent controlled the airAnd life was in that small still living breath.Where are you? since so much of you is here,Your unique odour quite ignoring death.My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dearAnd vital in my longing empty arms.But other clothes fill up the space, your space,And scent on scent send out strange false alarms.Not of your odour there is not a trace.But something unexpected still breaks throughThe goneness to the presentness of you.”

“When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.”

“In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.”

“Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.”

“Is it that bad, Mrs. Bowen?" Clement asked.Emily shook her head. "Gertrude's been hurt and so she's generalizing. It's a pretty good country on the whole, and the people in it, too. We have our faults and they may be glaring, and we have individuals we may not be proud of, but take us by and large we'll stick our necks our for something we believe in, and that in itself may be a fault, but it's one I like.""Bravo," Abe said.”

“We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.”

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”

“Because you're not what I would have you be I blind myself to who in truth you are.”