“Well and good if all things change, O Lord God, provided I am rooted in You.”

“Songs of the SoulOn a dark night,Inflamed by love-longing -O exquisite risk! -Undetected I slipped away.My house, at last, grown still.Secure in the darkness,I climbed the secret ladder in disguise...”

“They can be like the sun, words.They can do for the heart what light can for a field.”

“While I don't equate the dark night with depression, I do think our depressive moods could be imagined spiritually rather than only psychologically.”

“With respect also to spiritual sloth, beginners are apt to be irked by the things that are most spiritual, from which they flee because these things are incompatible with sensible pleasure. For, as...”

“The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up t...”

“Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.”

“Since God lives in the heart, I was not to seek some Being way up in the sky . . . my journey to God was not outward, but inward! The only way to get closer to God was to become ordered enough insi...”

“What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”

“The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”

“...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.”

“Joy is thankfulness, and when we are joyful, that is the best expression of thanks we can offer the Lord, Who delivers us from sorrow and sin.”

“imagine the desertmothers, with hair tangledtighter than their theologyand breasts that flowed milkand mystic wisdom. theyknew how to draw the singingsigils in the sand, how to digrough and bitten ...”