Would love be so different with someone else? Was love even possible with someone else? Love was supposed to be easy, wasn't it? Then why did she feel so tormented?
Idols are often good things that we have made into ultimate things.
God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us as we are.
The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
God looks at the anxious and says, I tore my Son to shreds for you, and you're afraid I will not give you what you need?
The basic purpose of prayer is not to bend God's will to mine, but to mold my will into His.
You don't fall in love. You commit to it.
It is one proof of a good education and of true refinement of feeling, to respect antiquity.
The important thing is to never stop questioning. Never lose a holy curiosity.
It was this feeling for a lot of my characters, who are dissidents or banned artists and writers, that they had had to fight living under so much surveillance, and then suddenly they come to America and they're like, I'm not being surveilled - I'm not even being noticed at all.
I want to know how to make this girl laugh. I want to know what makes her cry. I want to know what it feels like to have her look at me as if I’m her knight in shinning armor.