Quotes from Charles Martin

Man's greatest need is forgiveness while his greatest desire is power.

Sometimes I think that hell is two places: it's a place you end up, but it's also a place that you live before you get there. I don't know if the devil's got horns and a spear for a tail, but I don't think that's the point. The point is that hell is separate from love. If Lucifer knows anything, he knows that. And ever since Emma left, I'd known the same thing. It's a lonely, desolate place.

Could you wash Judas's feet?

Back home, I went to my closet and pulled out the old engineer's transit case stored there. When we were kids, Emma and I had found it in the attic, dusty and empty, and the leather strap used to carry it had a small cut in it. The tag on the top of the wooden-hinged lid read Circa 1907 . It was mostly weatherproof and offered plenty of room for the things I valued—like books.

I do know this—this right here is just prelude. Dress rehearsal. The intro. One of these days each one of us is going to get called up and given the chance to join our voices in a song we've never heard, yet one we've known our whole lives.

I'm sorry I ever thought about eating you.

Augustine said it best: You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

It was often what Charlie didn't say that spoke the loudest.

That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence."

Here's the truth: No matter what happened on the stage tonight, no matter where you went when you drove out of here, no matter where you end up, no matter what happens, what you become, what you gain, what you lose, whether you succeed or fail, stand or fall, no matter what you dip your hands into...no gone is too far gone. You can always come home. And when you do, you'll find me standing right here, arms wide, eyes searching for your return. I love you.

People in darkness don't know they're in darkness because it's all they've ever known. It's their world. They navigate primarily by bumping off things that are stronger. Immovable. They don't know darkness is darkness until someone turns on a light. Only then does the darkness roll back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can't stand light. And it hasn't. Not since God spoke it into existence.

Whether or not I wake up . . . I'll have a new heart.