The moral high ground is a lovely place. It won’t stop a missile, though. It won’t alter the trajectory of a gauss round.

A few generations living and dying without a sky, and enclosed spaces lost the atavistic terror of premature burial.

No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.

The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster.

Or was that fatalism another good move in design space? Did the universe evolve eyes and wings and sense organs and bitter amusement at the prospect of death all the same way?

Dead’s not good, but at least it’s simple.

Fayez whistled low. “That is not dead which can eternal lie. Or, y’know, whatever.

I’m a long-flight pilot. Pushing a little bubble of air-filled metal across an ocean of nothing is what I was born to do.

You want a shadow, you got to have light and something to get in its way.

You can order the sun to come up if you time it right. I’m not driving this bus. Making it do what I want would be like talking someone out of a seizure.

You know, ” Naomi said, “if you’re looking at hundreds of people burning to death as a problem solving itself, that may be more evidence that you’re on wrong side.

Open your eyes and see how many gifts there are to unwrap. Notice the presence of your presents. It’s not your life that is disappointing: it’s your mind.

We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge

There is always hope, as long as the canvases are empty.

Life may not always fall into neat chapters, and you may not always get the satisfying ending you're looking for, but sometimes a good explanation is all the rewrite you need.

I'm capable of making $44 million. I know I'm intellectually capable of finding a series of things and making hundreds of millions. I have to get there and do it. Carefully. Legally.

Starstruck with one buck, your girl look like Donald Duck.

To be an artist is to take responsibility for the world's destiny. You shape it by your vision.

There are three conversions necessary (for the Christian life): the conversion of the heart, the mind, and the purse.

Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.

I'm so inspired and stimulated by the work that it doesn't ever feel like work.