jonsmith

“the beauty of the creative gesture is wild, unwilling and painful.”
― Stefan Zweig, Paul Verlaine

“It is a shame that we so quickly lose that ability to believe in things; it limits the opportunities we have to transform ourselves, to save ourselves, for it puts the awful burden of transforming and saving ourselves on ourselves. Once you stop believing, you cannot pray, or make sacrifices or pilgrimages, or light candles. You are stuck with yourself, in a world without miracles.”
― Peter Cameron, Andorra

“he’d spent his whole life trying to make God love him—and that this didn’t matter in the slightest. All that mattered was that he loved God. He told me that once he knew this he was home free.”
― Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers

“there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown