Palpant Quotes & Sayings

Christ leads us into the wilderness of suffering to engage us there. When he meets us in the wilderness, he is manna, he is water from a broken rock. But he is also the one who wants us to potently feel our lack so that we cling to him. The Apostle Paul expressed as much when he wrote, we are 'sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.' God is the one who leads us into the desert and who makes us feel exposed and frail there. He is the one who turns the wilderness into a womb from which his children are born into gladness. And, like Hagar, we cry, 'You are the God who sees. — Ben Palpant

A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul. — Jillian Michaels

THE SENTIMENTALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD has produced a great many paradoxes. The most curious, however, may be that children have acquired more and more stuff the more useless they have become. Until the late nineteenth century, when kids were still making vital contributions to the family economy, they didn't have toys as we know them. They played with found and household objects (sticks, pots, brooms). In his book Children at Play, the scholar Howard Chudacoff writes, Some historians even maintain that before the modern era, the most common form of children's play occurred not with toys but with other children - siblings, cousins, and peers. — Jennifer Senior

I lay curled in a fetal position one night, listening to my wife's voice. In the evenings, she just talked, speaking light into my darkness by reading verses to me. I needed a touchstone and she knew it, so she kept gently pointing toward Christ. She set aside her fears to speak into my own. — Ben Palpant

It's the new me," I explained, waving my hands jazz-style in greeting. "Matthew Swift, Midnight fucking Mayor - I've got multicoloured highlighters and everything. — Kate Griffin

Kublai went on as if he had not spoken.
Before you all, in the lands of my enemies, I declare myself great khan of the nation, of the khanates under my brothers, Hulegu and Arik-Boke, of the Chagatai khanate and all others. I declare myself great khan of the Chin lands and the Sung. I have spoken and my word is iron! — Conn Iggulden

The first time I got into the studio, when I was 17, 18, I got to work with people who were some part of the Cheiron thing, who did all the early Britney Spears stuff, all the early 'NSync stuff. — Erik Hassle

God does not look at our suffering from afar. It is an intimate event to him. He is the author of every detail, speaking the suffering as it occurs. — Ben Palpant

To be terrified and yet unafraid seems a great paradox of worship, but when one has tasted it, the notion of an eternity spent terrifyingly unafraid like that is remarkably appetizing. — Ben Palpant

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was satisfied that I had done my best. She was insane. — John Fante

His story is colored by the murder of a brother, the rape of a sister, the betrayal of a friend, the pounding of nails into flesh and bone, and the darkening of the sky. A world of what-ifs and could-have-beens, peopled by has-beens and might-have-beens. It is a world soaked in fear and drenched by the blood of a million martyrs. A world of men burned at the stake and babes slaughtered at their mother's breasts. A dark history with pain oozing into all its hidden corners. At the center of history is a death. Christ's death, the decisive point of history. Christianity is perhaps the most morbid religion of the world. Perpetually meditating upon death with little crosses hung around their necks, Christian disciples sing their way to martyrdom. Anticipating death and calling it gain, Christians are evangelists of the grotesque. The very hope of the Gospel rests directly upon our ability to imagine a world in which suffering serves as the soil from which resurrection springs. — Ben Palpant

Actually, I can write anywhere - airport lounges, in bed, on a rattling train going north. — Kate Mosse

If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you'll never end up with a nag. — Zig Ziglar

Yes, we are raw. Yes, we are in the dark belly of a whale. Yes, we ache. Who can be Jesus' "little sunbeam" at such a time? Would Jesus even want such a thing? He is after much more than happiness in our lives. He is after a sustaining joy and he will give us that joy by giving us himself, whether through the small gifts of life that bring us gladness or through the dark night of suffering. Sweeping affliction under the rug of our heart, therefore, is simple denial, an act of cowardice, and act of ungratefulness. We must dare to look it square in the eyes. — Ben Palpant

Like Hagar, I would choose to flee my troubles, but Christ asks me, 'Where have you come from and where are you going?' Like Hagar, I only know what I am fleeing. I remain unable to make sense of God's providence, authority, love, or promises in the snapshot of my trial. Only in the larger story do these things become clear. So I sit in the sand, beneath the starless sky, and wait for my change to come. — Ben Palpant