There are a lot of misconceptions.

We are where we are as an individual, group, or nation because we often make short-time plan in expectation of long time benefit.

The fantasies we have about how great others are is just about as real as the fantasies we have about how inadequate we are.

You've learned something very young, Prince, something that even older men rarely understand. You've learned that fear isn't a terrible-looking thing but something lovely and seductive.

Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn't struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the "truth." If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.

Sometimes, by celebrating the evangelical heroes of the faith, we have inadvertently communicated something false: if it's not big and audacious and officially sanctioned, it's not good enough for God.