The Festival of Faith & Writing was short on tulips this year, but still rich in jewels from writers of many kinds.  Some glints from the riches:

“Make friends with really accomplished dead people.”
“Looking for truth can look like looking for trouble.”
“When you write about what you know, you point to an object– you elevate what you know. Instead, create a scene that provokes a way of knowing.”
Poet Scott Cairns

“Don’t try to write about your faith directly. Live your faith. Then write about your life and your faith will come out authentically.”
Comic book writer Gene Luen Yang

“Books are a military of reason and discourse.”
“I don’t need to spend time remembering my mistakes– other people will do plenty of that for me.”
Author and musician James McBride

“When we give our thinking to petty things, we become small souls.”
Author Richard Foster

“They sit down and get up. They sit down and feel put-upon. They sit down and feel victimized. They sit down and feel superior about feeling victimized. That’s what it’s like for the people whose work you admire– that’s what it’s like for everyone.”
Anne Lamott

“Fidelity to the facts is an aesthetic pleasure.”
Essayist Amy Leach

“Reference to transcendence is not dependent on religious impulse– the impulse toward transcendence is a structural restlessness in human nature.”
“There are culturally-conditioned captivities. We need to listen to our brothers and sisters of other places and eras if we hope to be released from those captivities.”
“The Golden Rule means if I want a right, I have to grant a right.”
“The enemy of Christianity today is not atheism but sentimentality.”
Yale Professor and theologian Miroslav Volf