One of the things I love about our source text as Christians, the Bible, is that it teaches us not to avoid conflict. And it teaches us that before the fall of man, in Paradise, there was conflict. God wants conflict to be a part of your life.

If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.

I think, in the grand epic, Jesus is the hero of our stories. And our stories, as they were, are subplots in a grand epic and our job is not to be the hero of any story. Our job is to be a saint in a story that he is telling.

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.

You don't learn anything from success. You know, it's comfortable, it's nice, it's warm, but success just leaves you kind of feeling a little bloated.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

I live again the days and evenings of my long career. I dream at night of operas and concerts in which I have had my share of success. Now like the old Irish minstrel, I have hung up my harp because my songs are all sung.

Like everybody, I have invested in things that have gone bad, because there's never any guarantee of success or profit when it comes to money.