Alice McDermott Quotes

I never pigeonhole myself into any religion, but I feel it has found me. I am trying to make sense of it... the essence of the Mathangi concept.

Every man thinks god is on his side.

My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear.

In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief.

I say I haven't lost my religion. I've lost my ideology.

I look to religion as a beehive. If you leave them alone they’re going to give you tons of their honey. But if you stick your head in there, you’re going to get stung bad.

Conversion is not my intention. Changing religion is not easy. You may develop some kind of confusion or difficulties.

You can't believe how different your life can be until you've immersed yourself in faith or given your life up to Christ or decided you have a higher power you want to follow.

I don't spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that's how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

To a mind like mine, restless, inquisitive, and observant of everything that was passing, it is easy to suppose that religion was the subject to which it would be directed; and, although this subject principally occupied my thoughts, there was nothing that I saw or heard of to which my attention was not directed.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science, it frustrated me to see students and parents who viewed faith and science as enemies.

I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.

In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.

My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.

Faith is never identical with piety.

The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires - and gives rise to - deep feelings of faith.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.

People often ask me whether I believe in God. I haven't seen God. But I think that one's beliefs are one's God - and, in those terms, yes, God is there.

For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.

Faith is important to me. It's important to millions of Australians. It helps to shape who I am. It helps to shape my values. But it must never, never dictate my politics.

My first encounters with faith came about the time I was a Boy Scout, at about 14 or 15. I made the logical deduction that they operate the same way; I treated my faith like earning a merit badge, and everything about Christianity was about earning merit badges.

It is with this as with religion: one usually believes what he has been taught.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.