"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are."

"The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth."

"If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young."

"When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens."

"It's funny how most people love the dead, once you are dead you are made for life."

"It is a enduring truth that love is the bridge that unites two souls across the chasms of mortal solitude."

"The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period."

"Life is a predicament which precedes death."