“Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody, means nothing. […] What you feel only matters to you; it’s what you do to the people you say you love, that’s what matters. That’s the only thing that counts.” (>>)

“I am an affectionate man but I have much trouble showing it.

“When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone–of being unlovable or incapable or love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn’t be seen–because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same.

“Being alone here now, all of my old fears are erupting–the fears I thought I had buried forever by getting married: fear of loneliness; fear that being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love; fear that I would never experience real love; fear that someone would fall in love with me, get extremely close, learn everything about me and then pull the plug; fear that love is only important up until a certain point after which everything is negotiable.” (>>)

“A fast-moving car is the only place where you’re allowed to not deal with your problems. It’s enforced meditation and this is good.” (>>)

“…constantly […] waiting for life to come around, expecting it to always be just around the corner.” (>>)

“She took a mouthful of rain
With a gutter full of pills
She wrote, ‘I handled the pain
But it’s the hope that kills’
So take care of yourself
And don’t worry about me
‘Cause everybody always
Everybody always leaves” (>>) [MP3]

“Of course the [Virginia Tech shootings] are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened.” (>>)

“He sipped from his mug as Foy managed to shrug and nod at the same time.” (>>)

“When I was a baby, my mother put me in a basket and shoved it out onto a river. That may be the source of my anxiety about drowning. I’m no therapist. I’m just saying here.” (>>)

“…he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch–that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easist of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedius study, if only to multiply ten-fold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal–such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them.” (>>)

“The [United States Holocaust Memorial] museum was just a year old; at its inaugural ceremony, President Clinton had described it as ‘an investment in a secure future against whatever insanity lurks ahead.’ Apparently, all he meant was that the victims of future exterminations could now die knowing that a shrine already existed in Washington where their suffering might be commemorated, but at the time, his meaning seemed to carry a bolder promise.

[…]

“The West’s post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.” (>>)

“The average hunter-gatherer worked about two to four hours a day to secure food and shelter, then spent the rest of his time swimming, telling stories, singing, playing games with his children and lazily staring off into space.” (>>)

“I’m fucking starved for love
I deeply need to feel connection with the infinite
I want the nourishment
I need to drink it just like water, and it will sustain me” (>>) [MP3]

“This is why I long for something more. This is why we all look at each other, and ask ourselves why is it that we feel this ache, and why won’t it go away? This is why we find so much beauty in the midst of so much seemingly irrational disarray. THIS is why I am broken. THIS is why my heart breaks. THIS is what is to come. THIS is what redemption is and THIS is how all is being made right.” (>>)

“But just like Christ was both divine and human, I believe that Scripture is both divine and human… and we need to take both into account without sacrificing the other… which is what I’m trying to do. This is called ‘concursus’ by B.B. Warfield, ‘accommodation’ by John Calvin, and the ‘incarnational analogy’ by Peter Enns, and I think this does the most justice to the text.” (>>)

“The whole song is a study of reality through the lens of opposites: inside vs. outside, fact vs. fiction, heart vs. brain. When looking at something, which view shows the soul or the truth of the matter, and which is just a shadow or filter of the truth.” (>>)

“The Greek word for merciful is ele&#233m&#243n. But, as we have repeatedly seen, the Greek of the New Testament as we possess it goes back to an original Hebrew and Aramaic. The Hebrew word for mercy is chesedh; and it is an untranslatable word. It does not mean only to sympathize with a person in the popular sense of the term; it does not mean simply to feel sorry for someone in trouble. Chesedh, mercy, means the ability to get right inside the other person’s skin until we can see things with his eyes, think things with his mind, and feel things with his feelings.

“Clearly this is much more than an emotional wave of pity; clearly this demands a quite deliberate effort of the mind and of the will. It denotes a sympathy which is not given, as it were, from outside, but which comes from a deliberate identification with the other person, until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as he feels them. This is sympathy in the literal sense of the word. Sympathy is derived from the two Greek words, syn which means together with, and paschein which means to experience or to suffer. Sympathy means experiencing things together with the other person, literally going through what he is going through.

“This is precisely what many people do not even try to do. Most people are so concerned with their own feelings that they are not much concerned with the feelings of anyone else. When they are sorry for someone, it is, as it were, from the outside; they do not make the deliberate effort to get inside the other person’s mind and heart, until they see and feel things as he sees and feels them.

[…]

“It is only those who show this mercy who will receive it. This is true on the human side, for it is the great truth of life that in other people we see the reflection of ourselves. If we are detatched and disinterested in them, they will be detached and disinterested in us. If they see that we care, their hearts will respond in caring. It is supremely true on the divine side, for he who shows this mercy has become nothing less than like God.” (>>)

“It has been the same in all my relationships. There was always, within me, this demand for affection, this needy, clingy monkey on my back. I wouldn’t be satisfied unless the girl wanted to get married right away, unless she was panicky about it, and even then I would imagine a non-existent scenario in which she finds another man or breaks up with me because of the way I look. I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place.” (>>)

“So, I began evaluating our lives to think of what is it that stands in the way of us being people who are able to give extremely sacrificially…” (>>)

“True generosity is measured not by how much we give away but by how much we have left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors.” (>>)