Quotes from Sigmund Brouwer

Yet truth is a diamond; even mishandles, smeared with grease, or buried in mud, it cannot be marred and waits for one with a cloth to polish it clean.

I hope it doesn't get worse. But even if it gets worse, I won't regret it. I would rather be dead than live in the factory anymore. Not much difference as they just want you to work to death anyway. And you can't even think there or talk. but I have to think. I have to talk. I have to talk about what I think.

Our greatest temptations generally arise from the areas closest to our hearts.

Outside, most people knew that decades ago, the religious fundamentalists lost the ability to transform society when they became a political movement. Their boycotts and protests were commonplace, any outcry against anything beyond the narrow range of what they saw as biblically acceptable was dismissed as a knee-jerk reaction.

Are you insane? You still not convinced that chances are better with me?

We mourn His suffering when, instead, we should mourn the reason He suffered.

For each of us, time is a thief of glory. What gives meaning to our lives and deaths is love and hope, if we are willing to share and accept.

Life is difficult more often that it is not. To live means to face difficulties. It's what you learn from those difficulties that matters.

my selfishness would be proof that it wasn't love, but a need for ownership.

Only two months had passed since I had been traded to play defense for the Red Deer Rebels. In that time, I had learned to expect great hockey moves from Jason. I had watched him stickhandle while sliding on his knees. I had admired the way he hip-checked guys from out of nowhere. And I had been dazzled once to see him score with two guys wrapped around his shoulders. In my 25 games since joining this team in January, I had learned to expect nearly anything from #33.

It all seemed to happen at once. Jason threw his sweater toward me. It flew into my face like a blanket in the wind. I pulled it away from my eyes to see the Hurricane right winger move in on the puck and sweep past Jason.

Jason was still on the blue eye, grabbing at the nylon belt that held up his hockey pants. Great. Two guys around us and swooping down on our goalie, and Jason is still undressing.

Jason rammed his pants down to his ankles. I couldn't believe it. We were down 1-0 less than 10 seconds into the game. In the same time, my partner was down to his red long johns and his hockey socks.

Four or five cockroaches exploded from the inside of his shin pad, scurrying in all directions on the ice. Cockroaches. Those big, black ugly bugs so gross they make beetles look cuddly.

We were down three goals by the end of the first period, something Coach Blair did not find amusing. "Three to nothing!" he shouted as we filed into the dressing room at the end of the period. "Three to nothing! This game is worth four points and all of you are skating like ballerinas out there!

I couldn't understand why he had such an attitude. Most teachers did their best to help hockey players because most of the players wanted education and hockey, and doing both was tough without support from the teachers. Anyway, my first two years in junior hockey had shown me there were better things to be afraid of than someone like this, attitude or not.

Brett was the left defensemen and veteran all-star for the Chiefs. The same Brett Beckham that Riley had made look like a fool on an earlier breakaway.

I couldn't believe it. Riley didn't flip the puck into the net to put us ahead. He actually held onto the puck and continued around the Chiefs' net. It stunned the crowd into silence. Riley Judd had just given up a chance at his third goal of the game.

Only 16 years old, this was his first game with the Portland Winter Hawks. In fact, it was his first game in the Western Hockey League. I knew it. The fans knew it. The media knew it. Everyone knew it. Half the reason the stands were so full was because of Riley Judd, superstar.

As a fourth-line winger, I'm nearly invisible. Sure, Coach Estleman knows my name. It's Tyler Watson. He understands my style of play. He knows what to expect from me on the ice. Other than that, I tend to fade into the background for him.

It's just easier not to be noticed. That way people don't expect things from you. There's no pressure, nothing to fear.

This was a reminder that a man can defy God for only the brief instant that his life flickers across the expanse of eternity.

Because of a cowgirl named Stephanie Becker, I ended up wondering what would kill me first: a charging bull or a man with a rifle, but that was on a cold moonlit night in the mountains, long after we first met. All of it really began earlier at the end of the hockey season when I saw her at an awards dinner for the Kamloops Blazers hockey team. I'll tell you right now, it wasn't the way I wanted to meet a beautiful girl.

The clapping got louder. Sweat ran down my ribs from my armpits. This was a lot scarier than going into sudden-death overtime in a crowded arena.