I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days.

It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.

Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.

Take all of me, ” he said against her mouth.

I really don't want to sound like overly negative or critical of the Internet in general because I'm actually really quite pro-technology.

I have so little control over the act of writing that it's all I can do to remain conscious.

Every spirit makes its house, but as afterwards the house confines the spirit, you had better build well.

I think I would have taken a (expletive) load of Advil.

Disloyalty in trusted servants is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to a public performer.

...the questions a photographer raises may be more profound than the answers the medium permits.

I think one thing that always attracted me to movies was the personalities. I went to movies not because the stories necessarily appealed to me, but because of the people in them.

Grace alone brings about every good work in us.

Even after Sword was published, I was still only thinking about the next book, Elfstones.