All life is preoccupied with death. Death is the only certain future. Yet in the face of reason, everyone holds out hope for the highly improbable.

This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.

Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows

His suffering was no more real than he was.

Reality, it seems, is not a flat plane, but has as many veils as an onion has skins.

For someone to be perfect, they must be real, however imperfect they are.

It is a matter of mere coincidence that there is often a real individual who corresponds with a celebrity, signifies them.

You need to bridge the gap between reality and freedom. Drugs are the bridge.

I feel underslept but overjoyed. Nothing feels so good as this.

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end?

Being optimistic isn’t about believingnothing can go wrong. An optimistacknowledges what can go wrongbut expects things to go right.

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.

It's here somewhere," I assured him. "Please tell me you haven't lost it already." "We did fall out of the sky, you know," I said indignantly. "It's easy for things to go missing.

If you're an American and you are, you know, subscribing to the ideals and the creed and the values that we believe in as a country, you know, then we don't have a religious test in this country.

Because poets feel what we're afraid to feel, venture where we're reluctant to go, we learn from their journeys without taking the same dramatic risks.

I have 52 first cousins. My mom and dad were the only two to move to North America, so I've got deep family there, but I'm a California kid.

I begin by not photographing.

We think of strangers as stronger and better than we are.

God's Word is not meant just to inform you, but to transform you.

If every American donated five hours a week, it would equal the labor of twenty million full-time volunteers.