Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.

We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.

A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Believing takes practice.

In my dreams, I never have an age.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

Agape love is...profound concern for the well-being of another, without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process.

People are more than just the way they look.

If we arent capable of being hurt we arent capable of feeling joy.

The great thing about getting older is that you dont lose all the other ages youve been.

Maybe thats the best part of going away for a vacation coming home again.

But when the world is indeed in chaos then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential.

Life is the greatest gift that could ever be conceived ... A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being Ive met.

Detachment and involvement the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion. It has taken me over fifty years to get a glimmer of what this means.

The great thing about getting older is that you dont lose all the other ages youve been..

A new year can begin only because the old year ends.

Because to take away a mans freedom of choice even his freedom to make the wrong choice is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.

Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.

A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.

The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

Nothing is hopeless, we must hope for everything.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.

If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.

If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow. It's everybody.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

I was part of it, and I am still part of it today in terms of what it means to a whole new generation of people who are interested in the enduring energy, achievements, spirit and creativity that exemplified our era.

Properly practiced creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.