"Please stop," I said. "You're upsetting the black Santas."

Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.

Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.

I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

...And in freedom, most people find sin.

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

A taste so profound and complex that it can't even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, tastes like love without the fear of love's dissolution.

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.

I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

I don’t really want fame and fortune

Everything is surprising, rightly seen.

God dwells in the heart where praise is.

You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.

There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.

Logic is in the eye of the logician.

It's basically the best job in the world. If you're fortunate enough - and I consider myself fortunate - you get to work with your friends and you get to work on projects that interest you.

You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

How do I cope with stress? I clean and organize.