Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just do it.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

But you understand the relationship between pi and Gaussian curvature, right? pg 264

Never, never give up in life, no matter how tough a situation may seems.

In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression.

Don't you touch me again. I will knock you out, junior!

A lot of people confuse free climbing with free solo. Free climbing is when we use ropes, but we only make upward progress with our bodies.

Your love is all that I was waiting for and now that I feel it ...oh man...what I thought was not even quarter of what I thought it really was.

Peter was the only one who walked on water besides Jesus, but he was also the only one who got out of the boat. Until you make a decision to believe, and then act on it, nothing will happen.

Nobody helps anybody.

Africa has been going through so much for so many years; it's time that it stands up the way other nations are standing up.

You can't be a writer if you don't write, it's just that simple.