My heart is desperately wicked” provides no such comforts. It heads off all attempts to shift blame, and cuts down all the pretensions of spiritual pride.

It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am...

And so they easily suppose that this truce, owing to helplessness, is victory and that they have convinced the other man. But in fact, instead of winning him over, they have merely applied a kind...

It is a mistake for anyone who is just in this stage to appear before a church as a teacher. He has outgrown the naivete with which in young people’s work he might by all...

I am more than a little jealous that the wonder I am party to has been sprinkled over Salinger’s gray head.