54 Quotes by Francis Spufford

By now the night tastes of nothing but ash. But nicotine substitutes for food, nicotine substitutes for sleep, and there is so little time left for the future, once all the demands of the present are taken care of.

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.

A task begun is easier than a task contemplated;.

Life is a mess of accident, I find.

Churches are vessels of hush, as well as everything else they are, and when I block out the distractions of vision, the silence is almost shockingly loud.

No, no, not in the law, it ain’t. Not in the end, I mean. When a man is dead, sense must be made of it; and it might.

Some people ask nowadays what kind of a religion it is that chooses an instrument of torture for its symbol, as if the cross on churches must represent some kind of endorsement. The answer is: one that takes the existence of suffering seriously.

No, no, not in the law, it ain’t. Not in the end, I mean. When a man is dead, sense must be made of it; and it might as well be sense as serves the living, for it won’t serve the dead, nohow.

Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe.