Jim Carroll Quotes

While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer - one haunted by Catholicism.

I was brought up a Catholic, so I take no pleasure in guilt.

Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment.

Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war.

Being raised Catholic myself, I think people who are Catholic tend to carry a lot of guilt. It's almost a joke.

Easter tells us of something children can't understand, because it addresses things they don't yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness.

If only I wasn't an atheist, I could get away with anything.

Being a Baptist won't keep you from sinning, but it'll sure as hell keep you from enjoying it.

I always know it's Sunday because I wake up feeling apologetic. That's one of the cool things about being a Catholic . . . it's a multifaceted experience. If you lose the faith, chances are you'll keep the guilt, so it isn't as if you've been skunked altogether.

I come from a very religious background.And actually I remained in it. All my anger I describe in my quarrels with God in Auschwitz, but you know I used to pray every day.

If ye never had a sick night and a pained soul for sin, ye have not yet lighted upon Christ.

I think once a Catholic, always a Catholic. You never escape. I still have Catholic guilt. It is in its basis a really powerful religion and a really strong set of beliefs. They permeate my work in many ways.

Religious or biblical can sometimes be a little soft, but 'A.D.' doesn't shy away from the violence of the time, the political intrigue. The story is really about the resurrection of faith, which is how the disciples went about keeping the word of Christ. So, they found all kinds of trouble and problems and torture and persecution.

I was raised with fear of God, guilt over Jesus, and terror of the Devil.

I don't think you can be a Catholic without an accompanying measure of guilt.

God will make right all that is wrong, He will take away the lingering effect of sin and what's not right in our lives. He knows how painful life in this world can be.

She died praying that she might die.

In the Christian faith, God really puts suffering front and center. He doesn't get squeamish about it.

The secular world looks to the church and to its chagrin, finds no love, no life, no laughter, no hope and no happiness.

I grew up as a Catholic, and there was so much that was beautiful there, and also so much that was troubling. The whole patriarchal thing, the whole male-dominated approach, really bothered me.

You've got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven... I have the devil in me! If I didn't have, I'd be Christian!

My father's a Southern Baptist minister. I wasn't lighting cars on fire; I just wasn't.

Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.