Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.

There are relatively few experiments in atomic physics these days that don't involve the use of a laser.

It was there I met my future wife, Celeste Landry, although our lives took us separate ways for many years and we were not to marry until more than ten years later.

I certainly remember building model rockets. It was fun to watch the rocket blast into the air, suspenseful to wonder if the parachute would open to bring the rocket safely back.

With every passing year, BEC proves that it still has surprises left for us.

After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun.

I was partly old-fashioned and partly modern.

As it was, I realized choosing the study of Chinese literature as my life's work was probably a mistake.

Conversely, I came to realize that being good at something is hardly a reason to avoid doing it.

God is always present. We’re the ones who show up.

My father managed to change his entire life after I wrote a novel about his brutal regime as a family man. It took resoluteness and courage for my father to change, and I need to acknowledge that.

The road to wisdom? Well it's plain And simple to express: Err And err And err again But less And less And less.

It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

I frankly don't care if you agree with my stand on abortion. I take that stand because no other stand is consistent with decent principles, and no other standard is consistent with the will of God.

The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And its a woman whos extremely vain.

Blessed the one who has kept the mastery of his eyelids and has not deceived himself with either mind or sense with regard to the skin of the flesh that after a little while oozes putrefaction.

Men never desire anything very eagerly which they desire only by the dictates of reason.

Our entire civilization is built on a foundation of unfixable bullshit.

We call the effort to cultivate our ability to be in the present moment ‘practice’ or ‘meditation practice.’