Spiritual Quote of the Day (Alice McDermott, on How Souls Are Saved by the Writer’s Art)

“All objects in fiction, even the most mundane, shimmer with mystery and meaning, with the souls of the dead as well as the image of some ultimate reality. Burnished buttons or shell-shaped cookies, mummified remains in a museum's glass case or a mundane registration card from the Florida DMV, these things are no longer simply the things themselves, but something transformed by the writer's attention, saved and stored and treasured by the writer’s art.”—Irish-American novelist Alice McDermott, “Last Word: Things,” Commonweal, July/August 2021

The image accompanying this post was taken by Slowking4, showing Alice McDermott reading at the 2018 Gaithersburg Book Festival, May 19, 2018.