The good people of Hyperion have done nothing to foist their religious opinions on me, so I see no reason to offend them with my proselytizing.

Father Duré, Hyperion (Dan Simmons)

‎There would be a strong argument for saying that much of the most powerful preaching of our time is the preaching of the poets, playwrights, novelists because it is often they better than the rest of us who speak with awful honesty about the absence of God in the world and about the storm of his absence, both without and within, which, because it is unendurable, unlivable, drives us to look to the eye of the storm.

Frederick Buechner