Joy Davidman quotes:

I suppose it's unfair, tricks of argument that leave wounds, but with this sort of thing that (C.S.) Lewis does, what I feel is a craftsman's joy at the sight of a superior performance.

Can we reasonably expect happiness from an insatiable appetite which, no matter how it stuffs its belly, is still psychologically like Oliver Twist in the poorhouse, holding up an empty bowl and begging, "I want some more"? Isn't it possible that our dream of the good society contained, from the beginning, a hidden violation of the Tenth Commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods"?

Anyone who studies our poisonous drugs, our denatured food, our deathtrap automobiles and houses, our lung-rotting cities, must concede that we accept a good deal of murder as inevitable simply because it is done to make or save money.

I became a communist because later on I was going to become a Christian.

What war did for him (hasten disillusionment with communism), childbirth did for me. I began to notice what neglected, neurotic waifs the children of Communists were and to question the genuineness of the love of mankind that didn't begin at home.

We sucked in atheism with our canned milk.

Being a fool for God was not merely alright but liberating.

Many Christians, though keenly sensitive to the dangers of greed and discontent that come with an economy of continually increasing consumption, nevertheless feel that it is worth risking if only it can end man's physical miseries. The trouble is that it can't. In a finite world, continually increasing consumption is just not possible.

No one who had once learned to identify happiness with wealth ever felt that he had wealth enough.

I had no knowledge of divine help, and all the world lost faith in gradual progress.