Expecting hell, we're ill prepared for heaven.

Roads are no place for naive chickens dreaming of nirvana.

Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope.

...the greatest source of misery in the world, the greatest cause of anguish and hatred and sadness and death, was neither disease nor race nor religion. It was hope.

My point is that death is more tragic than life, than any life, because every life has hope of some kind.

Kugel was a firm believer that death was not always a bad thing - that life often reached such levels of crapitude that dying was preferable to living.

Written with passion, honesty, humor, and a stubborn, rebellious optimism, Dear Marcus is like nothing I've ever read. When a bullet in the back told Jerry McGill not to go on, Jerry went on-smiling.

Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that until the age of thirteen, all of boy's sins are ascribed to his father.

So desperate was Kugel for things to turn out for the best, proclaimed Professor Jove, that he couldn't stop worrying about the worst. Hope, said Professor Jove, was Solomon Kugel's greatest failing.

The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.

Yes, if it is meant to be, it will be. In the meantime, create your own fate. Plan big and dream bigger.

A prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian.

Well, I’m just going to say it.I’m listening, Louis said.I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me.

Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.

The bottom line is this. When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you're part of the solution.

For it is better, with closed eyes, to follow God as our guide, than, by relying on our own prudence, to wander through those circuitous paths which it devises for us.

It's hard to be vulnerable in front of the whole world because everyone's a critic.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.

The only thrill worthwhile is the one that comes from making something out of yourself.