In life, redemption was walking up the down escalator: stop to congratulate yourself, and back you slid.

[s]he was a compulsive pessimist, always looking for the soft brown spot in the fruit, pressing so hard she created it.

Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.

Jealousy clings to love's underside like bats to a bridge.

Sorrow can be a bully.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.

There were in life rarely, if ever, "right" decisions, never perfect ones, only the best to be made under the circumstances.

Nothing in life gets dropped without someone else having to pick it up.

Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.

The rhetoric is the first step, it coarsens attitudes

Pride makes us artificial

A girl should want to look good for herself, not for boys.

I don't need debt. And if I need debt, if I want debt, I can get it from banks in New York City very easily.

The spirit of the year, like bacchant crowned, With lighted torch goes careless on his way; And soon bursts into flame the maple's spray, And vines are running fire along the ground.

There is too much theology in the Church now, and too little of the Gospel.

It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly.

When I don't understand something, I reach up and hold God's hand. And we walk together in silence.

Surfing should be called "foam-choking" or "sea stabbing.

My alternative to American superpower is the UN and I might add when China becomes the worlds greatest superpower you will need it too.

Death is terrible, tho' borne on angels' wings!