Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.

We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.

They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.

I'm only telling you on the truth, " he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.

Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.

That's what I like about God. You get to know Him by His occasional absence.

Pain's nothing. Pains what you give, not what you get.

Nothing was simple, certainly not simplification.

Genius inspires resentment. A sad fact of life.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise, ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life.

I build a painting by putting little marks together-some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It's not a job, it's a passion. When you become good at it, it's a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

When you love someone, you don't see parts of him you don't like.

You're easily distracted by the pattern of the cloth and can't see the quality of the threads.

When you call upon a Thoroughbred, he gives you all the speed, strength of heart and sinew in him. When you call on a jackass, he kicks.

The basis of the spiritual path is the development in ourselves of what is truly balanced, natural, and meaningful.