It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.

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.

Percy: I thought I’d lost my mom forever, and I was stuck on a hill in a thunderstorm fighting this huge bull dude while Grover was passed out wailing. “Food!” It was terrifying, man.

Challenges mean opportunities as well.

I'm pretty sure no one's reading action scripts saying, 'This has got to be Ed Helms.'

The tonal leads the way. You have to have a methodology.

Feare keepes the garden better then the gardiner.

Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure.

Real spiritual growth is always growth downward, so to speak, into profounder humility, which in healthy souls will become more and more apparent as they age.

Folks think that children will make up for all they ought to do and haven't done.

A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.

There is part of us that stands in quiet witness to what we do, taking notes, waiting for a solitary moment to bring up the subject.