The Graces of Paranoia

The New Yorker on Mel Gibson's filmed passion play:

How did he know that God wanted him to make "The Passion"?

Gibson in "Signs"

"There are signals," he said.  "You get signals.  Signs.  'Signal graces,' they're called.  It's like traffic lights.  It's as clear as a traffic light.  Bing!  I mean, it just grabs you and you know you have to listen to that and you have to follow it...." 

— "The Jesus War: Mel Gibson's Obsession," by Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker, September 15, 2003, p. 70

On the later plays of August Strindberg:

In some plays, when the central character notices things in the everyday world that start to take on unearthly significance (the masts of a half-sunken ship begin to resemble the three crosses on Calvary; someone takes sick just when one wishes the person dead), it usually indicates that the character is starting to experience a life-changing paranoid-schizophrenic episode, not unlike the one Strindberg himself experienced in his so-called "inferno" crisis in the 1890s.

— Cary M. Mazer, "A Strindberg Christmas"

For the Grace that I prefer to Gibson's looney ravings, see my entries for this date last year.