Michael O'Brien Quotes

Primarily I am a passionately religious man, and my novels must be written from the depth of my religious experience.

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.

To be frank, I suspect that today there is little respect for Christianity as source of moral teaching about goodness.

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.

Art used to be made in the name of faith. We made cathedrals, we made stained-glass windows, we made murals.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, there are a hundred American writers, many well-regarded, who appear to believe that one word is just as good as another and that everything which occurs to them is worth putting down.

I believe that gospel is more than just a sound, it's a way of life. I don't really have any shame to talk about spirituality in my music. A lot of your favorite soul songs started out in gospel.

In my run-ins with Christians... I find that they really are good moral people. And we overlap on everything, and they don't seem to be the kind of people that are waiting to hear voices to tell them what to do.

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

I'm not a practicing Catholic now. I didn't like what the church was doing with what Jesus had said, in a way. But I wouldn't say I'm not religious.

Religion is the solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God.

Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.

Being Mormon is a big part of who I am, and I try very hard to live the right way, but I don't know that I'm an example. I hate to say, 'Yes, look at me. I'm a good example of being Mormon.' I want to be the best person I can be, so in that aspect, maybe I'm a good example.

There are things that I do agree with in Christianity and things that I don't agree with. I'm not a regular churchgoer, but I do think that I have my own beliefs that I feel strongly about.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Honestly, I think a good film is spiritual, regardless of whether its subject is faith.

I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.

If there was no Bible, it would be no matter whether you could read or not. Reading other books would do you no good.

I don't call myself a very good Christian, but I think I know one when I see one, and I also think I know when I don't.

I'm a good girl, and I have a very good Jewish family who brought me up very well.

Those of us who believe in God and those of us who have dedicated our lives to helping others in the name of God don't want to take a second seat to anyone who is suggesting that one word out of the platform means that the Democrats across America are godless.

Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.