Q. You’re obviously a person who hasn’t given up. What keeps you going?

A. A great sense of humor and a very long view of history that comes with being a Benedictine. I honestly believe that we live in the center of the scriptures, that we’re still writing those scriptures, and that we’re the characters in those scriptures now. The scriptures are a template of our own lives. Where do you fit in? How do we write our scripture in our time? None of us is perfect and every one of us has failed. But, what were you doing when you failed? What were you doing as you stumbled along? Where were you going? What is important is not that you are stumbling, but whether you know where you are going. Do you insist on getting there? Can you get there without being distracted, without being stopped, without selling out? I just don’t want to go quietly.

—from an interview with Joan Chittister, “The Power and Potential of Prophetic Communities,” in Transformational Leadership: Conversation with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, edited by Annmarie Sanders, IHM (Orbis)