If ambition doesn't hurt you you haven't got it.

— Kathleen Norris

I just don’t understand how you can get so much comfort from a religion whose language does so much harm.”… I realized that what troubled me most was her use of the word “comfort,” so in my reply I addressed that first. Furthermore, I said that I didn’t think it was comfort I was seeking, or comfort that I’d found. Look, I said to her, as a rush of words came to me. As far as I’m concerned, this religion has saved my life, my husband’s life, and our marriage. So it’s not comforted that I’m talking about but salvation.

— Kathleen Norris

I recall the passage in the letter to the Hebrews in which we are reminded that Christ has already done everything for us. It speaks of the Christ who "offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:12). And yet the church teaches, and our experience of faith confirms, that Christ continues to be with us and to pray for us. The paradox may be unraveled, I think, if we remember that when human beings try to "do everything at once and for all and be through with it," we court Acadia, self-destruction and death. Such power is reserved for God, who alone can turn what is "already done" into something that is ongoing and ever present. It is a quotidian mystery.

— Kathleen Norris

It is the community that suffers when it refuses to validate any outside standards, and won't allow even the legitimate exercise of authority by the professionals it has hired.

— Kathleen Norris

I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

— Kathleen Norris

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

— Kathleen Norris

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

— Kathleen Norris

Marriage: a job. Happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with it.

— Kathleen Norris

More than ever, I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity to cope with change.

— Kathleen Norris

None of us knows what the next change is going to be what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner waiting to change all the tenor of our lives.

— Kathleen Norris