N.D. Wilson Quotes

Frank, I ran into Gladys and Billy at the store yesterday. Do you know what he said to me?"The girls went very quiet. Frank didn't look up."Hello?" he asked, and kept rubbing Henry's knife.Dotty hit him with her rag. "He said that. And so did she. But the important part was when he said, 'Frank ever get that door open?' Do you know what I said? What I said was--Are you ready for this? I said, 'No,'""Ah" Frank said. He lifted Henry's knife up to his mouth and dabbed the blade with his tongue. "That's my honest wife. I appreciate you lookin' out for my dignity.

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincing.

Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.

But if that was going to happen, it was going to happen whether or not he worried about it.

Slowly, Rupert Greeves raised his head. His eyelids fluttered and the corner of his mouth twitched up. 'What,' he asked the world, 'can you do to erase my laughter?

Your father died for me, and dying with you would be an honor, though not as great as dying to save you.

Welcome to His poem. His play. His novel. Skip the bowls of fruit and statues. Let the page flick your thumbs. This is His spoken word.

To exist in this poem [of creation] is a greater gift than any finite creature can imagine. To be so insignificant and yet still be given a speaking part, to be given scenes that are my own, and my own only, scenes where the audience is limited to the Author Himself (scenes that I often flub), to have been here with my frozen nose, to have been crafted with at least as much care as a snowflake (though I'm harder to melt), and to hear and feel and see and taste and smell the heavy poetry of God, that is enough.