Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage...

Life is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened His mouth and began to tell a story.

Welcome to His poem. His play. His novel. Skip the bowls of fruit and statues. Let the page flick your thumbs. This is His spoken word.

A man’s words reveal, first, the man. The words are not the man, and yet they reveal him faithfully and are to be identified with him. Out of the abundance of the heart, the man...

Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give.Almost.It is death by living.

Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you...

Truth: We are the present. We are now. We are the razor’s edge of history. The future flies at us and from that dark blur we shape the past. And the past is forever.

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect...

What is the world? What is it for? It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture,...

We must tell stories the way God does, stories in which a sister must float her little brother on a river with nothing but a basket between him and the crocodiles. Stories in which a...

Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the...

Frank, I ran into Gladys and Billy at the store yesterday. Do you know what he said to me?”The girls went very quiet. Frank didn’t look up.”Hello?” he asked, and kept rubbing Henry’s knife.Dotty hit...

We are narrative creatures, and we need narrative nourishment—narrative catechisms.

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered...

snow is overused.

and I don’t have to hold on with anything more than my toes

Solomon smiles with us

The moon was up, painting the world silver, making things look just a little more alive.

Rule 1 for Mortals: Love the Lord your God (with every bit of you). Rule 2 for Mortals: Love your neighbor as yourself. Tip 1 for Mortals: Ask God to call your bluffs.

I’ve watched goldfish make babies, and ants execute earwigs. I’ve seen a fly deliver live young while having its head eaten by a mantis. And I had a golden retriever behave like one.

Affectation is really a question of heart motive. Growing into a persona is an essential part of maturing. Anything you might choose to do is going to contribute to one persona or another. People will...

He was pierced and scourged and mocked. He was cursed and raised up on a tree, but He was in that ancient pose of victory. An old man on a hill, a blind man between...

Tom shut his eyes again, because when his eyes were shut, he could tell himself that there was light.

I love it as it is, because it is a story, and it isn’t stuck in one place.

Praise the Lord.” You were broken, but not by bullets and bombs. You were broken by grace.

God’s big enough that small doesn’t matter.

I love it with all of its villains and pretty liars and self-righteous pompers

The fall of man did not introduce evil; it placed us on the wrong side of it, under its rule, needing rescue.

Henry flopped onto his bed, and his steam leaked slowly out. He began telling himself a story in his head. It was about how just and kind and understanding he was. It was about right...

It has thick skin, and all the most important thinkers have become part of it.

Lewis had said that there is no creativity de novo in us—that we are all sub-creators pirating and rearranging portions of reality. I agreed. But it was only an idea. And then it took on...

Stories are like catechisms, but they’re catechisms for your impulses, they’re catechisms with flesh on.

Your father died for me, and dying with you would be an honor, though not as great as dying to save you.