The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.

Oh, propriety," says Mrs Benjamin. "We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command.

No one does. No one really knows how to be happy. You just get close, sometimes. That’s all I want – just to be close.

The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope.

The older you get, the more voices you get in the back of your head.

Voters might have short memories. Politicians do not.

We all reconstruct our past because we wish to see how our present came to be our present - do we not?

They have forgotten that war is momentum.War is natural. And war makes one strong.

What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back, and see it was full of treasures.

...there is no better time to examine and understand one’s selfhood than when it is dissected and hurtling through darkness.

Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home.

Every age gets the lunatics it deserves.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

It's rare in an administration for a secretary of state and a secretary of defense to get along really well.

All of this high-tech stuff is supposed to set us free and make life easier. To me, it makes it more difficult and demanding.

Always turn to God in the midst of your struggle and view people who offended you as an instruments of divine sovereignty.

Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play.

I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden.

I've got some words of wisdom.