Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

But he also knew this centurion, this man of honour, would change her…by giving her love…and love was the most powerful force in the universe.

Knowing your responsibilities doesn't make you mature but acting up on it does.

I promised my dad before he passed away that I would take care of the family.

to be honest and yet popular is almost as difficult in literature as it is in life.

Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.

If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.

See your misfortunes as blessings.

Run to the rescue with love/and peace will follow

love is what we are about, my darling," she says. "Not even in death has our love faded, for I live in your veins.