“Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down.” – Mrs. Brown”

The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman’s coal buttons.

When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us everyday.

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.

You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.

You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don’t attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

If you never stepped on anybody’s toes, you never been for a walk.

The thing is, it’s my own fault. I just can’t put up with a person that won’t go out of his way for me. And that’s what a man is. Somebody that won’t go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.

Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.

To people who think of themselves as God’s houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.

Let no Body be afrighted, because so many things are to be learnt, when the learning of them will be so pleasant; how profitable I need not tell you.

We cannot protect ourselves from trouble, but we can dance through the puddles of life with a rainbow smile, twirling the only umbrella we need — the umbrella of God’s love.

Why God should want and need us is a mystery. But it is true: otherwise he would not have created us and life would ultimately have no meaning for us.

The truth is, I need 10 lifetimes to scratch the surface of the things I’d love to do.

Sometimes an ember is all we need.

Morals are taught & preached not for the sake of heaven, but to assist those people on earth who have everything they need & more to retain their possessions & to help them to accumulate still more. Morals is the butter for those who have no bread.

I’m not saying to be happy you must be married. Nor am I saying that to be happy you need children. I’m saying that if you opt for children – be you man or woman – you have to take care of them.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.