Don’t you bully me with your politeness!

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

I was once in darkness, but now, I see a bright light on my path.

A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.

To pray is to learn to believe in in a transformation of self and world, which seems, empirically, impossible.

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

Remember you dont meditate to get anything, but to get rid of things. We do it, not with desire, but with letting go. If you want anything, you wont find it.

Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateurs drunks, the bores.

He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.

To know the will of God is the greatest knowledge! To do the will of God is the greatest achievement.

Often an idea has impact far larger than the person who originated it.

Do I want to see people take their Social Security payments and put them into private accounts, open up an eTrade account and go into the stock market? Absolutely not.