Where the Light Fell: A Memoir

by Philip Yancey

Death is the one time when every nobody becomes a somebody.

The writer attempts to bridge the wound of childhood with words, knowing all the while that, should the wound heal, he would no longer be a writer. —Richard Selzer, Down from Troy

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

Life goes on around me; I’ll just record it.

The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents. —Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies

I can never figure out how to have a friendly conversation with someone when my main point is that they are going to Hell.

Nietzsche drew a contrast between masters and victims: a master controls his own life, authorizes himself rather than letting others write the script.

suicide is the only honest response to a meaningless existence.

Goodness has become believable.

Augustine said, “Show me a man in love; I’ll show you a man on the way to God.”

REFLECTING ON MY visits, I begin to view church, like family, as a dysfunctional cluster of needy people. Life is difficult, and we seek ways to cope.

WE LIVE DAY by day, scene by scene, as if working on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box to guide us. Only over time does a meaningful pattern emerge.

We have hope that on this broken planet pain can be somehow useful, even redemptive.