“It's like watching a nature documentary about piranha in which all the deadly fish do is write each other love notes: Eventually, we want to see them bare their teeth and shred an ox.”

“I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future. People who do not want writers to write about violence want to stop them writing about us and our time. It would be immoral not to write about violence.”

“Nature’s constantly screaming with all its shapes and scents: love each other! Love each other! Do as the flowers. There’s only love.”

“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions”

“When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.”

“If we are serious about our discipleship, Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are most difficult for us to do.”

“And mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do.”

“I like Monty, I'd like to sit with my arm round him on the sofa all night watching documentaries on BBC Four.”

“If you love someone, then set them free. Don't shackle your loved one to your will. If you want to see them happy, let them do what they want. Because we cannot bind the hearts and minds of others. Like birds, only freedom and independence will make humans happy.”

“When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.”