WHEN HE WAS 12 YEARS OLD, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN saw a local production of “All My Sons” near his home in Rochester, and it was, for him, one of those rare, life-altering events where, at an impressionable age, you catch a glimpse of another reality, a world that you never imagined possible. “I literally thought, I can’t believe this exists, When I saw ‘All My Sons,’ I was changed — permanently changed — by that experience. It was like a miracle to me. But that deep kind of love comes at a price: for me, acting is torturous, and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great — well, that’s absolutely torturous.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman NYT December 22nd, 2008
 

Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.

Philip Roth Everyman December 22nd, 2008
 

“In my mid-20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said, after returning to his seat. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman NYT December 22nd, 2008
 

Hoffman plays the priest as a reformer, a man interested in a more philosophical and tolerant approach to religion. Shanley had given Hoffman a “back story” on Father Flynn, who is based, in part, on a teacher who had a profound impact on Shanley as a boy, but Hoffman added his own interpretation. “I did research by, among other things, going to church. As a kid, I was confirmed and I went to church, but I was bored. Now, I feel the opposite: A good sermon is just like theater. It combines the political scene and the Scriptures, and I thought, Hey, I could do it like that. It’s like a teacher getting up and saying, This is the school I come from.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman, on preparing to play priest in Doubt, NYT December 22nd, 2008
 

I plunged into my work in a very un·Christian and un·humble manner. A crazy ambition~ something many people have observed in me - made my life difficult and led my fellow human beings to withdraw their love and trust from me. That was terrible. Then something else arrived, that has kept transforming my life until now, and turned it upside down: for the first time I came to the Bible. And that too is a dreadful thing to say. I had often preached, I had already seen a great deal of the church, and I had spoken and written about It - but I had not yet become a Christian. I was still the lord of my own life, completely wild and untamed.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter to his fiance, A Life in Pictures December 18th, 2008
 

Of nothing but me. . . I sing, lacking another song.

John Updike,on radical self absorption, MIDPOINT, CANTO I, 1969 December 18th, 2008
 

But, now, the good news of Christmas. He who was born on Christmas Day stands by you, without thinking of himself for one moment. He does not demand anything from you; he demands you.

Karl Barth DELIVERANCE TO THE CAPTIVES December 18th, 2008
 

Great literature makes me feel unalone intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.

David Foster Wallace, according to Deborah Treisman, New Yorker September 29th, 2008
 

WHEN John Patrick Shanley steps into a Midtown Manhattan hangout known for its theater clientele, few would guess how much he belonged. There is little about his sure gait, workingman hands or no-nonsense affect that flicks at the artist within, let alone a playwright, often the more delicately wrought of the species. Only the eyes, weakened by glaucoma but working, suggest anything other than a tough guy from the Bronx. And in that gaze he is constantly calibrating everything around him, seeing a great deal and concluding not much. “It’s an important part of my personality that I continually adjudicate, but I never reach a verdict,” he explains. If Mr. Shanley, 58, more resembles a craftsman — the wizened, handsome contractor — it only makes sense. He builds stuff, including “Doubt....” He’s been building and telling stories for a while.

John Patrick Shanley  December 7th, 2008
 

Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.

John Skinner,advice to a novice monk, Celtic Daily Prayer ~ Northumbrian Community December 12th, 2008
 

In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.

Ayn Rand  December 10th, 2008