“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.”

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”

“Making the best of things is … a damn poor way of dealing with them…. My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.”

“…something can be so much more than the parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.”

“The politics we need in North America today will not and cannot come from liberalism or Marxism, or even from just muddling through. The situation we're in is so new – so unprecedented – that we need a whole new way of looking at the world. A whole new way of seeing things and thinking about things”

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

“It's not just that we remember things wrongly, but we don't even know we're remembering them wrongly”

“Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.”

“Don’t say: “They must have something in common, or they would not be called ‘games’” but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them, you won’t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!”

“We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.”