From "Habit of Being", pg. 572

This book of C.S. Lewis on prayer is a good one but I don't like to pray any better for reading it. I also just read one of his called Miracles, which is very fine. Deceptively simple. You really need to read every sentence twice. Go among the biblical scholars, says he, as a sheep among wolves.

To Betty Hester in 'Habit of Being', pg. 458

You confuse self-abandonment with a refusal to be yourself...As for the success, my tongue was not in my cheek. Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me you are indifferent to being heard. Everything about you screams to be heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has its end in its audience. Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I'm writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing. It is the same with Christian self-abandonment. The great difference between Christianity and the Eastern religions is the Christian insistence on the fulfilment of the individual person.

From "Habit of Being", pg. 457

[Nathaniel] Hawthorne interests me considerably. I feel more of a kinship with him than any other American, though some of what he wrote I can't make myself read through to the end.