Elaine Pagels

"...she is enormously strong. Pagels not only survived two tragedies in the space of fifteen months but since then has written another book, reared her children, taught her many students. She is, by all reports, a good colleague, a devoted friend. Her mind is quick and generous. At fifty-two, she has a mild, earnest appearance (a rounded, friendly face, windblown blond hair), and yet in conversation she is absolutely fierce, focussed, picking apart the careless question, delighted by the unexpected one. When she delivers her lectures for an undergraduate course on the New Testament—Monday and Wednesday mornings at ten—she does not so much pace the room as prowl it. Pagels radiates so much intensity that you somehow imagine a fast-burning cigarette in her hand. There is none. She does not smoke. She smolders."

"There are certain ecological structures in any marriage—some with a traditional gender bias and some not. Simply, people take on certain roles. In a way, I had to do everything. But, most of all, I also wanted to take on the challenge of not giving up, of not despairing. Because Heinz was on the side of life. He loved life. He was full of explorative excitement, interest, passion. I realized that it would be no honor to him to say, ‘I can’t take this, I can’t go on, it’s too hard.’ Somehow, I wanted to take on something of what I’d learned from him, the way he embraced life, with all its dangers and difficulties. I was challenged to do that. I can’t say I’ve done it, but that’s what I wanted to do."

"Could the title of the Gospel of Thomas—named after the disciple who, tradition tells us, went to India—suggest the influence of Indian tradition?"