Ryan

“I could call it "detachment," or "purity of effort," or "a refusal to judge by results." But as I watched from the hedge I felt no need to squeeze it into a formula. I was learning not by words like these, but by the nonsensical songs and babblings and sound effects that accompanied Papa's destinationless pitches out into the night, that there are genuine alternatives to the black-and-white categories into which most of us dump our lives. I was learning not by thinking, but through a father/son osmosis, that winning and losing, success and failure, are like the chalk strike zones I'd watched Papa draw.”
― David James Duncan, [ The Brothers K By Duncan, David James ( Author ) Paperback 1996 ]

“What I was feeling, Winnie,' he said, 'was that maybe the reason prayers never get answered is that everybody prays the wrong way, and for the wrong things. People ask God for good things all the time, and never offer anything in return. But if God exists, if He really made the world and is all-powerful and all-wise and all that, then I figure He made all of the world, including the bad stuff. So if He 'saw that it was good,' He meant just that. From His point of view, bad stuff must somehow be 'good,' or at least must serve some sort of divine purpose. I was trying to give God the benefit of the doubt, see? And look where it got me!”
― David James Duncan, [ The Brothers K By Duncan, David James ( Author ) Paperback 1996 ]

“Everybody, she says, has been a good citizen. She will say the name, quickly write it on the sticker, and then have me press it to each of their chests as they leave. It is a line of quiet faces. I take them down in my head. Now, she calls out each one as best as she can, taking care of every last pitch and accent, and I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all the difficult names of who we are.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

“Not because you are religious, but because I myself have experienced and felt it keenly, I will tell you that in such moments one thirsts like “parched grass” for faith and finds it precisely because truth shines in misfortune. I will tell you regarding myself that I am a child of the age, a child of nonbelief and doubt up till now and even (I know it) until my coffin closes. What terrible torments this thirst to believe has cost me and still costs me, becoming stronger in my soul, the more there is in me of contrary reasonings. And yet sometimes God sends me moments in which I am utterly at peace.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov