Francis Spufford Quotes

• Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.

  Francis Spufford

  Song, Reading, Tree

  45 Copy quote

• You never came out the way you came in.

  Francis Spufford

  Inspirational, Funny, Funny Inspirational

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• Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just be a flurry of events. It’s part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool.

  Francis Spufford

  Real, Loss, Shopping

  Francis Spufford (2012). “Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense”, p.34, Faber & Faber

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• Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue.

  Francis Spufford

  Believe, Stuff, Fool

  Francis Spufford (2012). “Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense”, p.19, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult.

  Francis Spufford

  Religious, Adults, Ordinary

  Francis Spufford (2012). “Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense”, p.19, Faber & Faber

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• God doesn't want your careful virtue, He wants your reckless generosity.

  Francis Spufford

  Generosity, Want, Virtue

  15 Copy quote

• If you based your knowledge of the human species exclusively on adverts, you'd think that the normal condition of humanity was to be a good-looking single person between 20 and 35, with excellent muscle-definition and/or an excellent figure, and a large disposable income.

  Francis Spufford

  Thinking, Humanity, Income

  "The trouble with atheists: a defence of faith" by Francis Spufford, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• Belief demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending - pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture.

  Francis Spufford

  Common Sense, Culture, Demand

  Francis Spufford (2012). “Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense”, p.8, Faber & Faber

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• We are supposed to be on the side of goodness in the sense that we need it, not that we are it.

  Francis Spufford

  Needs, Sides, Goodness

  Francis Spufford (2012). “Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense”, p.141, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• What follows is more about books than it is about me, but nonetheless it is my inward autobiography, for the words we take into ourselves help to shape us.

  Francis Spufford

  Book, Inward, Shapes

  4 Copy quote

• I can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence.

  Francis Spufford

  Mother, Reading, Silence

  4 Copy quote

• When I'm tired and therefore indecisive, it can take half an hour to choose the book I am going to have with me while I brush my teeth.

  Francis Spufford

  Book, Tired, Teeth

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• If your memory was OK you could descend upon on a bookshop – a big enough one so that the staff wouldn’t hassle a browser – and steal the contents of books by reading them. I drank down 1984 while loitering in the 'O' section of the giant Heffers store in Cambridge. When I was full I carried the slopping vessel of my attention carefully out of the shop.

  Francis Spufford

  Memories, Book, Reading

  4 Copy quote

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