“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myri...”

“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe its because dullness is intri...”

“When people call it [depression] I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the wi...”

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worsh...”

“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits th...”

“Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, re...”

“I bought salvation from a man on the street. He said, "Go down to the beach and let the waves wash your feet.”

“We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon which we depend for daily strength are healthy for our character rather than harmful. We must ask...”

“God made you for His pleasure. And He made you intrinsically needy and dependent on His unspeakable joy. If you are struggling with sin our addiction, dont try to kill your appetite for pleasure. I...”

“I was planning a death, not a burglary, but in many ways that just made it easier. Taking a life was, in my experience, a damned sight less complicated than taking jewels from a hidden strongbox.”

“He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found h...”

“Nature can counsel nothing but crime.”

“A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.”