Naomi Young

“God never sends suffering. Never. It is never "God's will" that we should suffer. God would like us not to suffer. But since the world brings suffering, and since God refuses to use His almighty power and treat us as foolish children, He aligns Himself with us, goes into Auschwitz with us, is devastated by 9/11 with us, and draws us with Him through it all into fulfillment. This is a high price to pay for our human freedom, but it is worth it. To be mere automatons for whom God arranges the world to cause us no suffering would mean we never have a self. We could not make choices.”
― Wendy Beckett

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“God in America is a free spirit, a supernatural entity capable of being shaped to fit a variety of ideas, Christian or otherwise. Like divine Play-Doh, America's God can be kneaded with hands, squashed between fingers, coerced into shapes, manipulated by devices, and, though it's not always recommended, digested by human bodies. Because God's Spirit is nontoxic.”
― Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity

“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor