This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt. [...] The dream is dreamed to us. We are the objects. We simply find ourselves put into a situation. If a fatal destiny is awaiting us, we are already seized by what will lead us to this destiny in the dream, in the same way it will overcome us in reality.

“When Moses, at the burning bush, says to God, “Who are you?” God says to him three words: “Hayah asher hayah.” And those words are mistranslated in English as “I am that which I am.” But in Hebrew, it means “I will be who or how or where I will be,” meaning, don’t think you can predict me. I am a God who is going to surprise you. And one of the ways God surprises us is by letting a Jew or a Christian discover the trace of God’s presence in a Buddhist monk or a Sikh tradition of hospitality or the graciousness of Hindu life. You know, don’t think we can confine God into our categories. God is bigger than religion.”

“The essential structure of martyrdoms in the Legenda Aurea has already emerged: the chaste Christian female, beloved by a Roman, is made to suffer all manner of erotically tinged torments while the pagan continues to lust after her. So it is in accounts of actual decapitations, such as that of Juliana. Betrothed to Eulogius, prefect of Nicodemia, Juliana refuses to receive him carnally unless he embraces the Christian faith. […] The prefect [thus] has Juliana stretched and broken on a wheel until the marrow spurts; but an angel makes her whole. Seeing this, all persons present - about 500 men, with 130 women - believe in Christ, and suffer martyrdom by beheading. Undeterred, Eulogius has his bride plunged into molten lead; but the metal suddenly cools, becoming ‘as a lukewarm bath’. This is finally too much for the prefect. Cursing his own gods for being impotent against this frail woman, he orders her to be beheaded too. Apparently this last move is successful, for the saint 'goes bravely to her death’.”