"I am a part-time novelist who happens also to be a part-time Christian because part of the time seems to be the most I can manage to live out my faith: Christian part of the time when certain things seem real and important to me and the rest of the time not Christian in any sense that I can believe matters much to Christ or anyone else. Any Christian who is not a hero, Leon Bloy wrote, is a pig, which is a harder way of saying the same thing. From time to time I find a kind of heroism momentarily possible---a seeing, doing, telling of Christly truth---but most of the time I am indistinguishable from the rest of the herd that jostles and snuffles at the great trough of life. Part time novelist, Christian, pig.. . . ..That is who I am."

-----Frederick Buechner, from the preface to "The Alphabet of Grace" (originally delivered as The William Belden Noble Lectures at Harvard University, 1969)