Affectation is really a question of heart motive. Growing into a persona is an essential part of maturing. Anything you might choose to do is going to contribute to one persona or another. People will only call attention to it if it is markedly different from the course you were apparently on before.

— N.D. Wilson

A man's words reveal, first, the man. The words are not the man, and yet they reveal him faithfully and are to be identified with him. Out of the abundance of the heart, the man speaks. The foundational nature of all language is therefore metaphorical because every word a man speaks reveals himself—just as God reveals Himself through the Word. Every word spoken ultimately reveals the speaker.

— N.D. Wilson

But if that was going to happen, it was going to happen whether he worried about it.

— N.D. Wilson

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.

— N.D. Wilson

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.

— N.D. Wilson

Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give. Almost. It is death by living.

— N.D. Wilson

God's big enough that small doesn't matter.

— N.D. Wilson

Henry flopped onto his bed, and his steam leaked slowly out. He began telling himself a story in his head. It was about how just and kind and understanding he was. It was about right he had been, how necessary his tone and word choice. Furthermore, it was about a girl who just didn't understand, who was completely ignorant. Then, for some reason, the narrator of the story included an incident in which Henry ha pushed an envelope into a strange place just to see what would happen. It hadn't even been an accident. The incident did not fit with the rest of the story, so Henry tried to ignore it. He couldn't ignore it, so he tried to explain it. Completely different things. The post office was obviously not dangerous. It was yellow. I just wanted to see what the mailman would do. The flashlight was stupid. I didn't shine a flashlight into the post office. She didn't even act, sorry. I would have acted, sorry. I always act sorry when people get upset. She didn't even care that I probably saved her life. She didn't know. Furthermore, she was unconscious. Oh, shut up.

— N.D. Wilson

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else.

— N.D. Wilson

I listened to you tell me, tell everyone, and all the world, “Praise the Lord.” You were broken, but not by bullets and bombs. You were broken by grace.

— N.D. Wilson