...a world where a sparrow's fate and that of a man can be decided in the blink of a cat's eye, such is the true measure of time.

No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.

You live it forward, but understand it backward.

To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.

Geography is destiny.

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-

God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.

Being the first born gives you great patience.

When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

A leader does not lose focus because he wants to please his followers.

He that has much to do will do something wrong.

And that's the wonderful thing about family travel: it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind.

To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?

Pride is a sweetmeat, to be savoured in small pieces; it makes for a poor feast.

The Republicans are the party of bad ideas. The Democrats are the party of no ideas.

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

Our hope in life beyond death is a hope made possible, not by some general sentimental belief in life after death, but by our participation in the life of Christ.

I'm my own writer. My material means I'm entirely separate.