Christian Writers Quotes

We find upon all occasions, the early Christian writers speak of the Father as superior to the Son, and in general they give him the title of God , as distinguished from the Son; and sometimes they expressly call him, exclusively of the Son, the only true God ; a phraseology which does not at all accord with the idea of the perfect equality of all the persons in the Trinity. But it might well be expected, that the advances to the present doctrine of the Trinity should be gradual and slow. It was, indeed, some centuries before it was completely formed. ~ Joseph Priestley

We at the Christian Writers Guild couldn't be more proud of Brandy Vallance. Let her debut novel transport you to an entirely fresh time and place where you'll soon forget you're turning pages and find yourself riveted to the destinies of characters who'll leave a lasting impression on your heart. ~ Jerry B. Jenkins

Most of the early Christian writers thought the text "I and my Father are one," was to be understood of an unity or harmony of disposition only. Thus Tertullian observes, that the expression is unum , one thing, not one person; and he explains it to mean unity, likeness, conjunction, and of the love that the Father bore to the Son. Origen says, "let him consider that text, 'all that believed were of one heart and of one soul,' and then he will understand this, 'I and my Father are one. ~ Joseph Priestley

For Christian writers, religious faith is not a rebellion against reason, but a revolt against the imprisonment of humanity within the cold walls of a rationalist dogmatism. ~ Alister E. McGrath

Unfortunately, to try to disconnect faith from vision is to do violence to the whole personality, and the whole personality participates in the act of writing. The tensions of being a Catholic novelist are probably never balanced for the writer until the Church becomes so much a part of his personality that he can forget about her - in the same sense that when he writes, he forgets about himself. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater. ~ Flannery O'Connor

...as Parson Hawthyn says on receiving the gift of a book in The White Witch: "You give me great wealth, for the gift of a book is the gift of a human soul. Men put their souls in their books."
The soul in the books of Elizabeth Goudge reached out to readers worldwide and surely made of her, not merely a romantic novelist but one of the great Christian writers of the twentieth century. ~ Christine Rawlins

Christian writers, whether they like it or not, do not simply write for themselves; for good or ill, readers will see their work as reflecting Jesus Christ and his church. And if only for this reason - though there are other reasons - one must take great care when dealing with potentially controversial topics not to imagine one's every pronouncement preceded by 'Thus saith the Lord.' The law of love, on which 'all the law and the prophets' depend (Matt. 22:40), mandates charity toward one's opponents in argument. ~ Alan Jacobs

The writer who position is Christian, and probably also the writer whose position is not, will begin to wonder at this point if there could not be some ugly correlation between our unparalleled prosperity and the stridency of these demands for a literature that shows us the joy of life. He may at least be permitted to ask if these screams for joy would be quite so piercing if joy were really more abundant in our prosperous society. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of tho ~ G.K. Chesterton

The Christian writer will feel that in the greatest depth of vision, moral judgment will be implicit, and that when we are invited to represent the country according to survey, what we are asked to do is to separate mystery from manners and judgment from vision, in order to produce something a little more palatable to the modern temper. We are asked to form our consciences in the light of statistics, which is to establish the relative as absolute. For many this may be a convenience, since we don't live in an age of settled belief; but it cannot be a convenience, it cannot even be possible, for the writer who is a Catholic. He will feel that any long-continued service to it will produce a soggy, formless, and sentimental literature, one that will provide a sense of spiritual purpose for those who connect the spirit with romanticism and a sense of joy for those who confuse that virtue with satisfaction. The storyteller is concerned with what is; but if what is is what can be determined by survey, then the disciples of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Gallup are sufficient for the day thereof. ~ Flannery O'Connor

We also have volumes of writings by the "apostolic fathers," who were the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. They authored the Epistle of Clement of Rome, the Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Polycarp, the Epistle of Barnabas, and others. In many places these writings attest to the basic facts about Jesus, particularly his teachings, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and his divine nature. "Which of these writings do you consider most significant?" I asked. Yamauchi pondered the question. While he didn't name the one he thought was most significant, he did cite the seven letters of Ignatius as being among the most important of the writings of the apostolic fathers. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch in Syria, was martyred during the reign of Trajan before A.D. 117. "What is significant about Ignatius," said Yamauchi, "is that he emphasized both the deity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus, as against the docetic heresy, which denied that Jesus was really human. He also stressed the historical underpinnings of Christianity; he wrote in one letter, on his way to being executed, that Jesus was truly persecuted under Pilate, was truly crucified, was truly raised from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too. Put all this together- Josephus, the Roman historians and officials, the Jewish writings, the letters of Paul and the a ~ Lee Strobel

I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion ... I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste. ~ Georges Bizet

I have a friend [whose] mom is very, very Christian and crazy religious…She's like that for all the wrong reasons and isn't actually true to her word. She doesn't practice what she preaches. The things she does preach, she contradicts them all the time. She can be really hypocritical. It went out to her and anybody else like that…A lot of our fans are having issues with loving themselves and coming to terms with their sexuality…A lot of those kids have a really tough home life where their families are exactly like the people I'm talking about in 'Holy.' They've really latched onto that one because that's the life they have to deal with and the people they've had to deal with. I think everyone knows people like that ~ Lynn Gunn

As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society. ~ Anne Lamott

There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous. ~ Rick Bragg

I've read everything that Isaac Asimov ever wrote, for a start. I'm massively into my fantasy genre, anything by R.A. Salvatore or David Gemmell. I've read every single book those writers have written. ~ Robert Kazinsky

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. ~ Doris Lessing

Too many in the Church today are likes babies in the nursery,they put everything in their mouth. ~ John Paul Warren

People have been fed a Lean Cuisine in the name of Jesus and told that it was a feast and they've decided there must not be much to this faith stuff after all. People see folks who bear the name of Christ who are acting loudly out of fear and have decided that peace must be found elsewhere. People are hungry to be a part of something that matters and to know that they matter. ~ Peggy Haymes

If you're a writer, the insight of other writers - if there's some kind of Holy Grail message on how to deal with writer's block or how to deal with any problem that can come up - whether you're writing about yourself or a group of people, I find that very interesting. ~ Jim Rash

Many Christians suffer from loneliness because they are sitting instead of serving. ~ Croft M. Pentz

To aspiring writers, I say : Don't give up. Storytelling has been an integral part of the human condition since the beginning of time. Don't let anyone tell you your dreams don't have value. They do. ~ Beverly Jenkins

Never give up, Never surrender!!!!!
If you think you can't, then you must, if you must, then you can..Tony Robbins ~ Paula V. Hardin

Beware of harking back to what you once were when God wants you to be something you have never been. ~ Oswald Chambers

Yet every writer worth a good-god damn knows this too, for it is graven into each of us: no one cares for beauty. Not in fiction. Not on its own, not pure, untroubled beauty; not in fiction. [...] For here is the only real difference between the life of reality and the life of fiction. Fiction only works when the beauty is tainted by pain. For fiction is not about life; it's about the troubles of life. ~ Marcus Sedgwick

Most writers who leave their country physically have already left it mentally and emotionally. ~ Ariel Dorfman

I was born into a Christian family and brought up in a Lutheran church. My faith has been the center point of my life, really, since I was a child, but at 16 years of age, I fully surrendered my life over to Christ. At that point, as a teenager, I began to grasp the concept of Christ's true love and forgiveness. ~ Michele Bachmann

No doubt a man may be saved, like the penitent thief, without having received the Lord's Supper. It is not a matter of absolute and indispensable necessity, like repentance, faith, and conversion. But it is impossible to say that any professing Christian is in a safe, healthy, or satisfactory condition of soul, who habitually refuses to obey Christ and attend the Lord's Table. ~ J.C. Ryle

Our sacred duty is to proclaim and preach the gospel of salvation to all people from every nation. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I think I was born to write. My mother would put a typewriter on the dining room table and say "there you go".

My first story was published in the Christian Herald and they would pay me five guineas. I wrote my first novel when I was just 14.

I was into mysteries and thrillers at the time but I eventually I drifted into romance because my mother would always ask me to write 'something pretty'.

I've never got bored of it because its something I absolutely love. My books are full of hope and romance rather than sex.

They are a form of escapism - you can escape the parts of the world that you don't like. ~ Ida Pollock

Writing is a highly encoded form of communication that takes place from one mind to another. ~ David Amerland

We first doubt, to find the truth. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Christian growth is forgetting about yourself. ~ Gerhard

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes. ~ Alden Nowlan

We have become who we think we need to be and not who we want to be. ~ Stephen Christian

I grew up with rock and pop music from the 70s and 80s. I had to play guitar in school - it was a music college and we had to take instrument classes there - so I think guitar playing and guitar sounds have always been an influence. ~ Christian Fennesz

Prayers offered up in Christian worship in the earliest days of the faith were addressed to 'Our Lord the Sun,' evidencing that 'primitive' Christians were quite in the spirit of Pagan forms and ideologies. ~ Alvin Boyd Kuhn

In a creative business, if you're happy, it will come out in your work. I don't see how you can be happy if you don't like the people you're working with and if they aren't a joy to have fun with. ~ Christian Louboutin

The Writer's Oath
I promise solemnly:
1. to write as often and as much as I can,
2. to respect my writing self, and
3. to nurture the writing of others.
I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always. ~ Gail Carson Levine

Every Christian who struggles with depression struggles to keep their hope clear. There is nothing wrong with the object of their hope - Jesus Christ is not defective in any way whatsoever. But the view from the struggling Christian's heart of their objective hope could be obscured by disease and pain, the pressures of life, and by Satanic fiery darts shot against them ... All discouragement and depression is related to the obscuring of our hope, and we need to get those clouds out of the way and fight like crazy to see clearly how precious Christ is. ~ John Piper

I structure the scripts and work on them on films and work on scenes with writers and but I haven't written a script myself, I really respect what they do and I'm fortunate I get to work with people that I really enjoy working with and we all kind of spitball and work together on these things, but I haven't written a script yet. ~ Tom Cruise

I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn't give up. Then I wrote one more book. ~ Beth Revis

Take a deep breath. Inhale peace. Exhale happiness. ~ A.D. Posey

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way - then because they also have depression, I think they're more in touch with human suffering. ~ Nick Flynn

I'm noticing an exciting trend around the country: a resurgence of interest in Christian apologetics (the defense of the faith). This is a reaction to the current attacks on the essentials of Christianity that are coming from militant atheists, radical professors, and Internet gadflies. ~ Lee Strobel

For short term relaxation, I take a hot tub. It's my best way to unblock writers' block, too. For a bit longer relaxation, I enjoy camping. Just being in the wilderness, with no phones or computers or anything I have to do really refreshes my spirit. ~ Ellen Hopkins

The power of gratitude is the grace of fullness existence. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I've got to be out doing a million things. That's how I find stories. That's how I get the relationships and get the projects that I get with the writers, the directors. ~ Dana Brunetti

Writers write like readers and read like writers. ~ Laura Hamilton

If you think of India in the 1980s, there weren't many writers in English around. The ones that were there, Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth, were living abroad or publishing from abroad. ~ Pankaj Mishra

WHAT WAS JANE AUSTEN'S LAST FINISHED NOVEL?"
"Vaginas and Virginity."
"WHO IS THE LAST PERSON IAGO KILLS IN OTHELLO?"
"His manservant Retardio, for forgetting to change the Brita filter!"
"WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LITTLE MERMAID AT THE END OF CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S THE LITTLE MERMAID?"
"She turns into a fish and marries Nemo!"
"Fuck you! ~ David Levithan

I remember at one point being in fellowship, and everyone used to wear the fish symbol; it said you were a Christian. So I asked my father, 'Dad, why don't you wear that at work?' And he said, 'Your religion should be in your actions.' He set a great, great example. ~ Hugh Jackman

Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call "meditation" or, in Christian terms, "contemplative prayer". It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby. ~ Sara Maitland

Atheists as well as theists unconsciously observe society's convention that we must be especially polite and respectful to faith. And I never tire of drawing attention to society's tacit acceptance of the labelling of small children with the religious opinions of their parents. Atheists need to raise their own consciousness of the anomaly: religious opinion is the one kind of parental opinion that - by almost universal consent - can be fastened upon children who are, in truth, too young to know what their opinion really is. There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents. Seize every opportunity to ram it home. ~ Richard Dawkins

I have serious problems with fundamentalist Christians and their creationist theories. Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days. My skepticism is due, in part, to the fact that the Bible says that the sun wasn't created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16-19). I have a hard time figuring how twenty-four hour days could have been measured before that. ~ Tony Campolo

Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. ~ Adrian Rogers

Enraptured by the words
that I craft in my sentences,
she loses herself unknowingly
and surrenders herself
to my poetry! ~ Avijeet Das

I reckon Southern writers are a lot like biscuit makers...more than one can give ya a good feed. ~ Lola Faye Arnold

He admired writers whose own stories were as interesting as the ones they wrote. ~ Adam Langer

I have been an elated reader of all the great Russian novelists and short-story writers since my early twenties and I have often written about them, though I know no Russian and have never been to Russia. The lure for me (I realize now) lay in John Bayley's wonderful phrase - I believe in his learned introduction to Pushkin's Letters - that the "doors of the Russian house are wide open": we see people who speak out in the lost hours of the day as it passes through them. ~ V.S. Pritchett