WRITING

'Writing is really about structure and traffic management. If you don't have the structure right, nothing else will happen.'

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.127.  

OLD AGE

'Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.'

Philip Roth, Everyman, p.156. 

HOW GRACE BEGINS

'To desire the aid of grace is the beginning of grace.'
Augustine of Hippo in James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.67. 

TRUE FREEDOM MEANS DEPENDENCE

'...the irony: my freedom of choice brings me to the point where I need someone else to give me a will that is actually free. And not merely free to choose - since that's what got me here in the first place - be free to choose the good. If freedom is going to be more than mere freedom from, if freedom is the power of freedom for, then I have to trade autonomy for a different kind of dependence. Coming to end of myself is the realization that I'm dependent on someone other than myself if I'm going to be truly free.' 

James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.66. 

WHEN YOUR FREEDOM TO BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE IS LIMITED BY YOURSELF

'It is a terrible and terrifying thing to know what you want to be and then realize you're the only one standing in your way - to want with every fiber of your soul to be someone different, to escape the "you" you've made of yourself, only to fall back into the self you hate, over and over again and over again. After the thrill of independence and experiments in self-actualization, drinking your so called "potential for Being" to the dregs, when the exhaustion starts to set in and then eventually morphs into a kind of self-disgust, you can reach a point where you know you want a different life but are enchained to the one you've made.'  

James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine, p.64. 

CONVERSION DEFINED

'Conversion is not an arrival at our final destination; its the acquisition of a compass.'
James KA Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, p.50. 

BEWARE THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW YOU

'The people who are exposed only to your public ministry persona, your books or Internet blogs, and your voice when it is in a conference or on a dvd are functionally incapable of giving you an accurate view of yourself. You must take their congratulatory words as well meant but lacking accuracy and therefore spiritual helpfulness.'  

Paul David Tripp in Emma Ineson, Ambition, p.112. 

THE WEAKNESS OF STATS

'Hearts are rarely strangely warmed by statistics.'
Emma Ineson, Ambition: What Jesus said about power, success and counting stuff, p.55. 

KNOW YOUR LIMITS

'Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him,'
Walker Percy in David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.98. 

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WITH YOUR LIFE?

'Let the young soul survey its own life with a view to the following question: 'What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?' Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self.' 

Friedrich Nietzsche in David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.98.