You are consciousness itself – not the objects of consciousness. They used clear-color prisms and waterdrums to help him relax. You have a body, but you are not your body. You are the awareness of your body. You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have feelings, but you are not they. Who are you?

The fact of that devotion is nothing less than sacrifice. The only good of which mortals are capable of love. To even begin to do good, one must be willing to go beyond oneself. All things made by man perish. All words scatter into the emptiness that is the future. Only love endures. Love for what is. Not for what was or could be. Love for what is – that alone is true love. That alone the future cannot dissolve. For that love is God.

The power of the witch is in her hair. The ones who killed her knew this. They cut off her long tresses, tied them into devil’s shoelaces, and bound her hands and feet.

Einstein’s claim that change is an illusion. Things do not become, they have not been, and they will not be: They simply are.

Ricardo Pinto’s The Chosen strikes the reader with great force.

The madness of demons is rage – the madness of angels – hope.

Ricardo Pinto's The Chosen strikes the reader with great force.

…for a true Christian, all strangers are Jesus.

Now you see. We are all fugitives. We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us -- because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptyness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough.

I dream of a true husband—a good man, not a brute, nor a champion of men on the battlefield; I dream but of a gentle man, one who neither speaks too loud nor ignores evil.