I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher,‘ ‚Prophet,‘ ‚Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.

If he have faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He betrays himself. He breaks out. He confesses and teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you’re always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

Christianity supplies a Hell for the people who disagree with you and a Heaven for your friends.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

Therapy? I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Faith never makes a confession.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

Hope is favorable and confident expectation; it’s an expectant attitude that something good is going to happen and things will work out, no matter what situation we’re facing.

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word – prayer. Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.

Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout’s obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

You might say, ‚Can’t we have a more human Christianity, without the cross, without Jesus, without stripping ourselves?‘ In this way we’d become pastry-shop Christians, like a pretty cake and nice sweet things. Pretty, but not true Christians.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts.

I just think that it’s strong and it’s important that we recognize what the Christmas season is about; it’s about the birth of our Savior, and there’s a lot of pressure today to be politically correct, but people are realizing, too, that you have to be open to express your faith what you want believe.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.