“Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people — in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for — although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors.”

“We are born to make manifest the glory of God.”

“Just as we are, we come to Christ Jesus, He will change us to his image.”

“Only Jesus Christ can change a soul to be a spiritual being.”

“To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.”

“To be born again is to live through Jesus, to be mature is to let Jesus live through you!”

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)… ‘I spoke to three scholars,’ [the character says ‘at last.’] …two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]’ …I can see that he’s excited. [narrator]’ …Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a ‘literary’ writer based on this quote. A ‘literary’ author knows that a character’s excitement should be ‘shown’ in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator’s commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the ‘I can see that he’s excited’ sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho … Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), ‘a remote human possibility.’ He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”

“I’m always happy when I’m surrounded by water, I think I’m a Mermaid or I was a mermaid.The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean.”