"Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool."

"Considering that the modern and contemporary literature taught in most universities is largely bleak, cynical, morbid, pessimistic, misanthropic dogmatism, often written by suicidal types who sooner or later kill themselves with alcohol or drugs, or shotguns, Professor Takuda was a remarkably cheerful man."

"I am amazed that there are still nights when I sleep well."

"...any talent - whether to write songs or to write novels...came with the obligation to use it to the fullest of one's ability, with a fierce commitment barely distinguishable from neurotic obsession. ... In fact...commitment to the point of obsession wasn't merely an obligation but a necessity..."

"All but universally, human architecture values front elevations over back entrances, public spaces over private. Danny Jessup says that this aspect of architecture is also a reflection of human nature, that most people care more about their appearance than they do about their souls."

"One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint " on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism,and sweeten the bitter heart."

"Even if there are moments during the day when all seems normal and when every action of your own and of those around you seems to be unremarkable, the appearance of ordinariness is an illusion, and just below the placid surface, the world is seething."

"Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish."

"Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation.Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again.Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn."

"You can't fix things with a hug, but you can't make them any worse either."

"Years later, after other experiences with dogs, I wondered if their species were shaped and charmed to serve as four-legged guides able to assist in leading humanity back to our first-and lost-home. By the example of their joy and humility, by wanting nothing more than food and play and love, by the deep satisfaction that they take from those humble things, they belie all creeds of power and fame. Although they have the teeth to tear, it is by swish of tail and yearning eyes that they most easily get what they want."

"As we passed his table, I saw that the device that imprisoned the book was clever but wicked-looking, as though the critic were holding the work - and it's author - in bondage."

"Translating the words on the door, he said, "Light from light." "Waste and void, waste and void. Darkness on the face of the deep," I said. "Then God commanded light. The light of the world descends from the Everlasting Light that is God.""That is surely one thing it means," said Romanovich. "Bit it may also mean that the visible can be born from the invisible, That matter can arise from energy that thought is a form of energy and that thought itself can be concretized into the very object that is imagined."

"But with one exception, all things pass from this world and time erases not just memories but entire civilizations, reducing everyone and every monument to dust. The only that survives is love, for it is an energy as enduring as light, which travels outward from its source toward the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe, the very energy of which all things were conceived and with which all things will be sustained in a world beyond this world of time and dust and forgetting"."

"I never plan for the future but wander into it with a smile on my face, hope in my heart, and the hair up on the nape of my neck."

"In twenty-one years, I have not considered changing to Todd. The bizarre course of my life suggests that Odd is more suited to me, whether it was conferred by my parents with intention or fate."

"When men in power decide that things need to be rebalanced at any cost, the violence is never brief and never really directed solely at the imbalance that supposedly inspired it. The rule of law becomes the rule of violence. Revenge becomes a synonym for justice. No city is safe from such horror, no nation, no time in all of history. Be ready to recognize the moment. Be always ready."

"For a long time things were so bad. Very bad. Dark even when there was light.The only thing that kept the dark back was the Forever Shiny Thing that was her secret...It is a word...the word hangs on a silver chain. The word is HOPE."

"Anyway, in those years, I was happy, as to one extent or another I have always been happy. The forest was not a wilderness to me, but served instead as my private garden, comforting in spite of its vastness, and endlessly mysterious.The more familiar a place becomes, the more mysterious it becomes, as well, if you are alert to the truth of things. I have found this to be the case all of my life."

"Mr. Thomas, any scientist will tell you that in nature many systems appear to be chaotic, but when you study them long enough and closely enough, strange order always underlies the appearance of chaos."

"Keep in mind the roots of violence: Lust, envy, anger, avarice, and vengeance...the taproot...the killer's ultimate and truest motivation...is the hatred of truth...the hatred of truth is a vice. From it comes pride and an enthusiasm for disorder."

"On the third, directly before me, were embedded more polished letters: PER OMNIA SAECULA SAECULORUM.For ever and ever. In the red light, the brushed steel glowed softly, like embers. The polish letters blazed.Without a hiss, For ever and ever slid aside, as though inviting me to eternity."

"Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than a monk, you have more opportunities than you might have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it."

"Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reins."

"Her direct stare probed, as if the story of my life were written in my eyes in a few succinct lines that she could read."

"Art is the only answer to chaos and the void."

"Hope lies in action."

"Evil never dies. It just changes faces."

"To believe in luck, you must believe that the universe is a roulette wheel and that instead of paying out to us what we have earned, it pays out only what it wishes. But it is not a spinning wheel of chance, it is a work of art, complete and framed by eternity."

"When we make our own misery we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable."

"I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it."

"Even the wisest and the best of us can be foolish occasionally."

"How obvious can it be? ... The purpose of makeup is to defy the degradations of time, and time is just a synonym for death."

"...it will be a world made not bright but brighter, not clean but cleaner."

"Perhaps they thought they could bring to this valley only those things they loved, leaving behind all ugliness.We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which it must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness, and misery."

"Stay low, stay quiet, keep it simple, don't expect too much, enjoy what you have."

"Besides, I can't get to where I want to go by conscious or unconscious suicide. I've got my strange little life to lead. Leading it the best I can - that's how I buy the ticket to where I want to be."

"...he looked as if nothing hard in the world had touched him..."

"Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him."

"Funny how people that don't believe in nothin' are so quick to believe every crazy story about people like us."

"More likely, they would just cease to exist.""That's death.""No, it's different. Death leaves a corps."

"I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari."

"I think it's perfectly just to refuse service to anyone based on behavior, but not based on race or religion."

"Not immediately able to proceed, I stood there, inexpressibly grateful that my life, for all its terrors, is so filled with moments of grace."

"On those occasions when he had killed in the dark, he later needed to see his victims' faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. "Deep down," the dream-victim had said, "You know that you're already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you've killed them than before."

"Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them."

"I am the One, and I see all.But the blind man in Apartment 1-A is blind in many ways, as are all human beings, even those with functioning eyes. They are blind to their folly, to their ignorance, to their history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing."

"The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded."

"By doing, I learn what to do. By going, I learn where to go. One day, by dying, I'll learn how to die, and leave the world and hope to land in light."

"We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable."