O, my past years in Rangoon are spectres to haunt my soul; and they seem to laugh at me as they shake the chains they have riveted on me.

Of how much real happiness we cheat our souls by preferring a trifle to God! We have a general intention of living religion; but we intend to begin tomorrow or next year. The present moment we prefer giving to the world.

The future is in our power. Let us, then, each morning, resolve to send the day into eternity in such a garb as we shall wish it to wear forever. And at night, let us reflect that one more day is irrevocably gone, indelibly marked.

The places chosen for the administration of the ordinance, and the circumstances attending those instances, in which the act of baptizing is particularly described in the New Testament, plainly indicate immersion.

I'm not sure many writers are trying to reconcile all the things that are separated in our culture - body and mind, urban and pastoral, lyricism and hardboiled, men and women, joy and grief. I tried to do quite a lot, but I wanted to create a serious work of literature.

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.

In my father's later years he asked several times that I remember him the way I knew him. He said that after his death, people would talk. They would say 'things' about him and he wouldn't be there to defend himself.

We spend billions on marginal and often unnecessary procedures on people who are in the final dying process, yet we leave millions of Americans out of the health insurance system, and America's kids have the worst dental health in the developed world.