“Envy Is Behind Flattery.”

“A man is only as rich as the number of children he fathers. After all, what else do we leave behind in this world...”

“He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him...”

“I'm ashamed of our human capacity to hurt and maim one another, to desecrate the body. Yet it allows me to see the cabalistic harmony of heart peeking out behind lung, of liver and spleen consulting each other under the dome of the diaphragm -- these things leave me speechless.”

“You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.”

“Geography is destiny.”

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