Whenever the wife wants to do drugs, she thinks about Sartre. One bad trip and then a giant lobster followed him around for the rest of his days.

A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.

A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.

The wife watched her neighbor get fat over the next year. The Germans have a word for that. Kummerspeck. Literally, grief bacon.

Is she a good baby? People would ask me. Well, no, I'd say.That swirl of hair on the back of her head. We must have taken a thousand pictures of it.

Here is what happens in middle age: Some friends and acquaintances who were merely eccentric for years become unmistakably mad.

Once when he was still young, I saw a bit of his scalp showing through his hair and I was afraid. But it was just a cowlick. Now sometimes it shows through for real, but I feel only tenderness.

What Ann Druyan said: Compressed into a minute-long segment, the brain waves of a woman newly in love sound like a string of firecrackers exploding.

No matter who it is or what you think of them, never rejoice in the pain of others. It lowers you to a level you should not be at.

May I never forget the goodness of the Lord.

My father was a teacher and my mother also worked in the school, so the family has a background in education.

Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.

Thankfulness is the tune of angels.

What does it avail you, if of many thorns only one be removed.

There is only one will and that is the Will of Fire. The will that doesn't let you give up

If I can survive, I can be somebody tomorrow.

To tell you the truth, I never thought of myself as much of a success.

I come from a place where you don't need to talk all the time. There are sign languages you learn.