"envy of Joyce"

"In a sense, I guess I did read my way into the Church. But I didn’t reason my way. I was drawn in large measure by envy of Joyce, who had been raised in a Catholic Church that had spiritual and imaginative power, and that went on haunting him after he had left. I couldn’t imagine writing an autobiographical novel to compare with Joyce’s Portrait, about a young woman who grew up singing 'On Eagle’s Wings.'"

     Julia Yost, as interviewed by Matthew Schmitz in "A conversation between two converts," First things, 12 November 2018, an excerpt from the book Mind, heart, and soul: intellectuals and the path to Rome, ed. Robert P. George and R. J. Snell (TAN Books, 2018).